


Waiting for the Fleet to Show

by cognomen



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Poe Dameron (Comics)
Genre: Back Pain, Canonical Character Death, Chronic Pain, Complete, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Depression, Explicit Sexual Content, First Order Poe Dameron, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, None of this is healthy and none of it should be emulated, Permanent Injury, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Rough Sex, Spoilers for the Poe Dameron comic through #14 (though not in the first chapter), Spying, Undercover, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 03:11:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10935762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: They tell him he won’t fly again - not for the New Republic military anyway - while he’s still in the hospital. The news splashes over his skin like a scald, refusing to sink deeper but leaving a burn that will remain tender for years.The nurses suggest it first, mixed with ‘too much damage’ and ‘potential for prosthetics’,maybe you could-but his attention always slides away before they can really finish. It’s like he knows the refrain, but he doesn’t like the song.An emergency ejection during a training exercise ends Poe Dameron's flying career before it starts, at least for the New Republic.  General Organa steps in to ask him to take a special assignment elsewhere, and Poe accepts, seeing no other value to his life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> -So it turns out ejecting from a jet at altitude can really do bad things to you. That was the first inspiration for this fic. Hope you guys are strapped into your ejector seats for this ride, and thanks for being willing to come along. Title from 'Milo' by Fredrik.

They tell him he won’t fly again - not for the New Republic military anyway - while he’s still in the hospital. The news splashes over his skin like a scald, refusing to sink deeper but leaving a burn that will remain tender for years.

The nurses suggest it first, mixed with ‘too much damage’ and ‘potential for prosthetics’, _maybe you could-_ but his attention always slides away before they can really finish. It’s like he knows the refrain, but he doesn’t like the song. 

The second week in the hospital on Hosnia Prime, a man in very trim uniform comes, with his flat service cap tucked respectfully under his arm. His face has that practiced mixture of military discipline and sterile condolence.

After a brief preamble he says, “Upon the advisory of these medical professionals, we hereby discharge you from our pilot’s training program. It’s an honorable discharge, son, don’t worry. Everyone knows it was all just an accident. We’ll take care of you, and all this...”

He gestures around the hospital room, to all of the apparatus hooked up to Poe, all the tubes and wires that are effecting repairs to his body that suddenly seem pointless.

“Why?” Poe asks. “It was one crash - just one accident - I can still-”

The man’s expression kills his words. 

“There are rules about risk management,” the man says. “About how much injury we expose our pilots too. We’re not the Empire, that’s the point. Every time you fly from now on, your injury will get worse. We won’t let you do that to yourself.”

Poe is silent, shocked, but only on the surface. The rest of him is still, deep water. The stone the man has just thrown cannot penetrate very deeply.

The man mistakes Poe’s silence for acceptance - many will in the upcoming weeks. “Just focus on your recovery. When you’re well again - back on your feet, I mean - you can come back to the Republic. We’ll find something for you.”

The vivid image that forms in Poe’s mind is of a desk, perhaps with an actual _chain_ attached. He lets it slide away. Because he’s military, and because Poe is a good man at his core, he thanks the representative for informing him. Because Poe is only human - and injured, at that - he hates the man, too. He will never see this man again and they must have designed it that way, to give Poe a target for his anger that he can’t take it out on. 

The funny thing is - in a way he couldn’t laugh at - he’s not angry. He hates what’s happened to him, and the man who brought him the news. But, he isn’t angry about it. Not yet.

His father shows up afterward, quiet and solid and still alive. He knows Poe well enough not to say anything right away. Poe can see that he knows, though. Can guess that he wouldn’t be there except for the destruction of Poe’s plans for his own future.

Kes Dameron is there to collect Poe; to gather him up and spirit him back to the friendly place he’d grown up, so he can recover in a familiar, supportive environment. 

“Bad crash, huh?” Kes asks first. 

“I wasn’t in it,” Poe says. “I ejected.”

“Hell of a thing,” Kes says.

It was. Poe has already been over it enough times in his mind - what he’d done wrong, how he’d trusted the flight crew to get everything right and ready. He hadn’t double checked because he was confident that they were the best, that they loved and enjoyed their jobs as much as Poe had.

Poe turns away from Kes’ quiet intensity.

“I lost BeeBee-Ate,” Poe says, and it’s still a quiet stab in his chest, a sharp, deep pain. He’d pulled the eject, but the droid had tried to land the damn T-85, tried to make sure Poe would be well clear of where it crashed if BB-8 couldn’t.

“I know,” Kes says, and he sits on the edge of the bed next to Poe, taking his hand. The burden feels a little lighter for a moment while they both grieve Shara Bey’s last gift to them.

“Will you come home?” Kes asks.

“I don’t think I have a choice,” Poe says.

Kes squeezes his hand and seems to have nothing to say. Poe feels better along the numb surface of his body, to have his father there; an old instinct that may not even fade now. There was no way Kes could make this right like all of the challenges of Poe’s youth.

“You always have a choice,” Kes says, and it’s meant to be a comfort, Poe knows. “It’s just whether or not you’re willing to do what you have to, to get there.”

-

The words haunt him later, when he’s done recovering and his spine refuses to feel as wine stem delicate as they tell him it is. Mostly, it aches way down in his lower back whenever he sits too long.

His re-application to the New Republic is denied by the system, citing the doctor’s previous reports of inoperable fractures and fissures along the length of his spinal column. Weak points created by the forces involved in being rocket-ejected from a starship traveling faster than the speed of sound within atmospheric pressures. 

Instead, Poe had finally abandoned home and the grating levels of pity he got there (not from Kes, never from Kes.) He’d endured all of the required physical therapy, gone tamely to every check and re-check because he had nothing else to do anyway.

When they’d cleared him, he could walk without a cane, stand as long as he needed to, but he was - and is - aware of his own fragility.

He finds that if he stops and sits too long, that’s when the pain comes - in the compression.

It goes again if he drinks - so he does. His stipend arrives, and once Poe pays his room up for the week, he spends the rest on alcohol and sometimes food. It’s a class-a bender, like the kind depicted in old fiction holos. It doesn’t really help but Poe sees no reason to stop, yet. Certainly not to settle down and watch others do great things while he slowly went crazy with the knowledge that he was Shara Bey’s boy, he was _born_ to fly.

Eventually he’ll break his pride apart and settle. As of yet, he’s not ready - not at twenty, to accept a future devoid of any of his dreams.

Maybe he could be smuggler, he thinks - though he has no ship, and no connections of the sort required for success. The appeal is mostly in the flying.

-

When he escapes his father’s orbit, Poe doesn’t make it very far. He knows he needs to be out - to get away from the suffocating kindness and understanding Kes offers in constant supply. He wants neither, nor does he want to spend another maddeningly pastoral day watching the lazy orchard leaves blowing in the wind. 

Yavin IV is beautiful and peaceful and quiet - Poe’s heart does not match.

He retreats to a cantina on a half forgotten world in the next system over, hopping a ride out with a shipment of Koyo fruit and going no further than he was certain he could hitch a ride back from. The only claim to fame this world has is proximity to a major hyperspace lane. It’s a stopover, a place to pause and stretch the travel hypnosis out of your system. It is not a destination in itself.

Poe finds it well suited to his needs. His severance still finds his account and they accept his stipend card. It’s inexpensive and well equipped with alcohol in three progressively more rough cantinas within walking distance of the port.

He takes a room at a dirty motel that smells like death sticks, sleeps one night on the hard, uneven mattress and believes everything the doctors had told him about the damage to his spine. Poe solves this issue with the judicious application of the other resource available here.

No one so much as wishes him a good day, even the serving Rhodian simply plops his drinks on the table carelessly after checking that the balance of credits on Poe’s stipend card was sufficient. Poe is so grateful to vanish into the haze of obscurity and intoxication that he actually feels his spirits lift for a time - the artificial elevation that alcohol gives, like low-slung clouds hiding jagged peaks below. Poe knows if he’s patient, that will change; the wind will send the clouds away. 

He whiles away a week in this pursuit, watching fresh faces appear each day and then vanish the next. It gives the impression of being a still stone in a rushing stream to his intoxicated senses. He is, he knows, well and truly wallowing in it. At the back of his thoughts, as half-dozen inspirational speeches play over each other in familiar voices, telling him to buck up, to get off the ground and back on his feet. To _do_ something with himself.

It feels good - better than anything else has since the crash - to ignore them. 

Someone sits at Poe’s table, across from him. They occupy the chair with a confidence and a complete lack of hesitation. Poe looks up, certain he’ll see an aggressive stranger - someone trying to muscle him for something or ask for a handout. It’s that kind of bar.

Instead, he looks up into the venerable gaze of Leia Organa - her eyes trained on him with laser-sight acuteness. She looks as much _through_ Poe as at him, her steely gaze holding no pity.

Poe resists the urge to stand up suddenly and come to attention.

He’d probably knock the table over.

She shames him with an adept of turn of words like a man with a vibroblade could twist it between his ribs.

“You look like your mother,” Leia says.

Poe says nothing. There doesn’t seem to be anything to say. Leia waits for the impact of her words to churn _something_ up inside him, eyes grim, like she’s released the missile and now waits for the fireball. Poe scrapes around the inside of himself until he comes up with words.

“I don’t feel anything like her, ma’am,” he says.

She makes a show of looking him over again, top to bottom, and does not dispute his point.

“What are you doing out here, Poe? Your father-”

“I know,” Poe says. “I know. I couldn’t take that anymore. Not the concern or the care, and not the way he wanted me back. The _old_ me.”

“The old you?” Leia asks.

“The one with a future, I guess,” Poe says. “Or at least hope for one.”

“You don’t think you have a future now?” she prompts.

“Not one worth mentioning,” Poe says, curling his hands around his glass and pulling it across the tabletop toward him. He wants to drain it and get another, but his stomach warns him against it.

Leia considers this hopeless answer with far more attention than it’s due. She looks at Poe, radiating something that at the very least isn’t pity. Finally, he has to look up from his glass at her, meeting her gaze. In it, he sees a sort of understanding. 

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she asks, looking at him. He knows she can see all the years behind him, all the ordeals of the past. She remembers Poe from his youth, and for a second he remembers what she had been like back then, too. “One day you’re so certain what your future will be, where it will be. You spend all that time getting ready for it. Then, in an instant, with one cruel act...”

She trails off, and Poe feels her loss suddenly, acutely. She is not the woman he’d first met in the rows of Koyo trees on Yavin IV. The years have changed her, too. Asked more of her than they rightfully should.

He thinks of Alderaan and the change in his life seems less vast, then.

“It’s strange,” Poe agrees. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Are you old enough?” Leia asks, making a joke.

It doesn’t unfreeze him the way he thinks it would have at any other time in his life. He manages a smile for her sake. 

“I was old enough to enlist,” he points out. He’s sure she knows and at least half-positive Kes sent her to round Poe up toward home like an errant Nerf.

“Then yes,” Leia says. “You can buy me a drink. I have a proposition for you.”  
-


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He receives assignment on the Finalizer, a proud name for the First Order. He doesn’t think too much about how much of that is his own skill, and how much is Resistance influence on his behalf. Either tip of balance implies something he doesn’t want to consider.

He receives assignment on the Finalizer, a proud name for the First Order. He doesn’t think too much about how much of that is his own skill, and how much is Resistance influence on his behalf. Either tip of balance implies something he doesn’t want to consider.

They’re all transported up in a troop ship, crammed into the space like animals going to market. At the first sight of the hangar, Poe has to admit a wave of awe. Everything is efficiently arranged and the space seems vast. Troops in the uniform white armor move past at a brisk pace in lockstep, trotting with all of their visors pointed in one direction.

It’s an efficiency they’d all practiced at enlisted officer school, but here it was mastered. For an instant, Poe feels the panic of being in the wrong place; the sensation that he has been captured by this machine and goes into it only as a terrified prisoner might. 

He’s glad he kept his own helmet on - it was part of his uniform and it hid his gawking while the deck commander inspected the arriving troops. One of his classmates gives him a discreet jab in the ribs, and Poe looks forward in time to pass muster.

The next group off the transport - infantry - doesn’t fare so well. The deck officer reprimands their presentation and issues them a three-lap penalty. 

Poe is grateful for his faceless neighbor as their rank assignments are handed out - the infantry are stuck running the whole length of the hangar. He’s technically an officer; his quarters are small, but just for him.

He follows the directions issued, marking the location on his com-tab so he can find it again later. His duty roster for the next day has already been registered - cogs are expected to fall into place already turning, in this machine.

The room is sterile and grey; compact almost to the point of stifling. At least he won’t have to share it.

There’s a package from the quartermaster on the bunk; efficient. No waiting in line. The issued uniform, exercise sweats, and flight suit are all the wrong size. Beyond the comical edge of large. Poe doesn’t want to stir up trouble on day one, but he can’t report to duty in these without reprimand.

At the comm screen in his quarters he looks up the QM expecting to leave a message, and he’s somewhat startled when the man answers after a few seconds.

“If you’re calling to requisition more socks, there aren’t any,” he says, in a clipped and formal tone.

Poe wonders if he ought to check how many pairs are in the bag he has.

“My uniforms are all triple-extra-large,” Poe offers, hoping that’s a fixable problem. It seems strange to run into supply chain issues here, familiar in a sort of painful way.

There’s a pause while the Quartermaster presumably looks at his screen and Poe’s records that stretches on for so long that Poe thinks the comm might have been terminated.

“Are you still-?” Poe begins

“Dameron, right? Room seventy-eight forty-nine?”

“Yes, sir,” Poe answers.

“Your report says medium,” the Quartermaster continues.

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you telling me that’s not what you received?”

“Yes, sir,” Poe repeats. “These are extra-extra-extra large.” 

Come to think of it, he wonders if any First Order pilot should really need clothing that size. He’s pretty sure it’s against regulations.

There’s another long pause; this time, Poe waits it out. He hopes there’s no shortage of uniforms in the more-requested sizes.

“It’s that damn droid again,” the Quartermaster mutters on the other end of the line. “Alright, Dameron. I’m sending it back with the proper size. When it gets there, turn over the incorrect uniforms.”

“Yes sir,” Poe says, deciding that if there are any socks, he’ll keep them.

The comm signal ends, then. Poe explores the rest of the room. 

There isn’t much to it - a drawer beneath the bunk, a thin mattress and scratchy blankets over a bed barely bigger than the one he’d had as a kid. The closet has hangars for all his uniforms and a secure weapons locker for his blaster and flight gear. Between the bed and closet, the bare metal floor is big enough to turn around on, and it looks like the refresher is shared with the next room. His door opens into the middle, between the toilet and sonic refresher, looking across at a door into the adjacent officer’s quarters.

Poe reminds himself to lock that door. He also resigns himself to a lot of waiting.

The droid that appears with his clothing is a squat, flat domed tripod of parts on wheels. It looks enough like one of the old R2 unit astromech droids to send a little pang through him. Poe watches the droid rummage through an attached delivery cart before producing another bundle of issued clothes. 

“Please return the incorrectly sized uniforms,” the droid says, in a toneless synthesized voice.

“Uh, yes,” Poe says, pausing to double check the size of the uniform he’s been handed. It’s a medium. There are socks in the bottom, but Poe figures the droid won’t notice the pairs missing from the bag he turns over. He hopes it doesn’t get in any more trouble for it.

“Here you go,” Poe says.

The droid has no answer for him, but takes the package with a grabber claw that snags on the partially unzipped bag, spilling some of the XXXL contents. 

Poe tries to catch them - the droid is slower to respond, finishing the motion to put the now-leaking bag in the cart before slowly swiveling its dome to train its optics on the dumped clothing. It takes a long moment to process the situation. Poe offers the shirt he’d caught and the droid tweezes it out of his hand with deliberate precision.

Then, it turns rapidly and throws it in the general vicinity of the trailer, misses, and turns to begin chasing the shirt down in its new location.

Poe leaves the droid to sort it out on its own, retreating into his quarters to hang his clothes in the closet and put his unders into the drawer under his bunk. Then, he runs out of steam. There’s nothing else to do. Poe pulls off his helmet and drops himself onto the bunk, hitting the frame through the thin mattress and wincing at the sharp, warning pain in his back.

-

He spends enough time lost over the next few days to realize it’s not a bad cover. The first week aboard the Finalizer, it’s genuine and he’s collected twice when his code cylinders trigger in areas where he’s not supposed to be. He does his best to make friends and endear himself to the security officers, but he knows he’ll really have to toe the line now until he proves himself to be worth the potential trouble his bumbling might cause. 

When he stops being genuinely lost, he pushes his luck a little, exploring to the edges of his allowance. His first week is without patrols, though not without other duties. He meets the otherwise faceless team of technicians who are assigned to the bank of TIE fighters he’s supposed to fly from - he does not have anything so specific as his _own_ ship, that’s too much like personal equipment for the First Order. He eyes each of these with the earliest blooming buds of distrust. He’ll never forget to double check their work.

He reviews the ship-specific patrol procedures and reports to his commanding officer - neither of them remove their helmets for this.

Poe supposes he’ll have to get used to this level of anonymity - he wonders if he changed his uniform and code cylinders with someone else’s, would they even know? Could he effectively transform himself into another person that way? Could he die as someone else or live their life?

Poe has a lot of time to consider this in the quiet hours of his work - catching up on briefings about Resistance activity and keeping his own secret log. He doesn’t know his contact, but they reliably pick up the information Poe leaves at the drop. There’s some reassurance in the knowledge that Poe isn’t out here completely on his own.

He’d probably never see - or never know he was looking at - the other Resistance spy. Poe knows whoever it is, they have the riskier job. Actually getting the information off the ship is far harder than just collecting it. It’s the part that chances exposure, that might be sacrificed to keep Poe in place, if it becomes necessary.

It’s a sobering thought. Poe’s not sure if the person is taken, they’ll keep the secrets they need to. He hopes that all of this might be over before it comes to that.

Then, just before the first patrol he’s entrusted with, the First Order’s walking weapon appears in the hangar bay; a tall, lean man wrapped in black and memories of Darth Vader. He’s a wan ghost, surrounded by the space unpredictability leaves and the promise of violence. Despite all their efforts to recall the terror of the old Empire, Poe feels unmoved.

Even knowing the relation of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader, and by extension, to his own General Organa, he only puts the pieces together with the spare - something is _familiar_ about the figure, beyond the obvious attempt - later. He puts these parts together with his hands on the yoke of the TIE fighter, black gloves cradling black plasteel and guiding. These don’t fly - not like the Republic models he’d gotten his first training on - they seem to glide instead.

It changes and narrows his focus, taking up the whole part of his mind that keeps the label of _flight_ , and frees other thoughts to slip into their unique spotlights on the stage of his mind. It’s the only time it feels safe to think without constricting the topics, even though he’s not alone in the cockpit. The gunners are almost always silent, and Poe doesn’t encourage them to transform into people - they are issued equipment, a part as likely to fail him as the X-Wing that had fallen out of the sky.

What he realizes in those silent moments in space, flying in the black as he escorts a shipment of gear from an outpost and hopes that no Rebels get any bright ideas, is that the figure he’d seen so strongly emulating Darth Vader had been his grandson, Ben Solo.

The realization leaves Poe feeling cold and sick; how strange that the next generation of bright lights of the Rebellion had washed up _here_. By choice, he supposes, on Ben’s part.

General Organa hadn’t mentioned it. Poe wonders at it, at all the agony it implies. He wonders, too, if there’s anything to be done.

When he sets the TIE back on the landing platform - an uneventful duty rotation - the plan is already forming in his mind. It would be a risk, but Poe was _here_ to take risks. Here, because the New Republic didn’t understand the merit in such endeavors. He doesn’t know if there’s enough of Ben Solo remaining to remember what they had as teenagers - or as kids.

But if any star remains in orbit to Ben’s now, it’s Poe’s.

He has to get close to Kylo Ren.

-

Poe only runs across the errant droid again by chance. Poe’s lost - everything’s a grid, but he can never tell what deck he’s on - and they look similar enough that Poe sometimes forgets to double-check the unending labels in the Imperial version of Aurebesh (used because the First Order has issue with romanticizing even the worst of the Empire’s decisions). He’d studied it of course, but it still slipped past his notice when Poe wasn’t paying attention to it.

The droid is on a garbage barge, de-activated and discarded. Apparently, one mistake too many for the Quartermaster. Poe wonders if his socks had been the final straw and feels a faint pang of guilt. Such an inefficient droid really did have no purpose here. 

So, he pulled it out of the garbage because he felt sorry for it, and because he is sure there’s something in the droid that can be salvaged.

It’s _heavy_ , and Poe drops it the last half-foot to the ground and hopes nothing had been done to prevent it from moving under its own power or the rescue would be over before it began.

“Hey, what are you doing?” there’s a regular buckethead guarding the trash barges as they wait to go into the incinerator. Poe wonders how one gets the duty.

“Sorry,” he says, looking up at the helmet angled in his direction. “I thought there must be some mistake.”

“Are you stealing that droid?” the trooper asks. 

“It was in the garbage?” Poe points out, unsure why anyone would take this job seriously. 

“It’s First Order property,” the guard insists.

“Well, yes, but-” Poe straightens up. “Doesn’t it make more sense to repair it than throw it away?”

This seems to confuse the guard. Poe glances him over - the Stormtroopers have no external identification. It’s something to do with a grand plan somewhere and equally to do with rendering them as interchangeable as their gear.

“Uh,” the trooper says. “I don’t know about this.”

“I’m not going to sell it,” Poe assures him - he’s pretty sure from the voice that it’s a guy, but he’s been wrong before, much to his chagrin. “I’m working for the First Order too, right?”

The helmet regarding him tips the other way and Poe crouches down next to the disabled droid. “So if I get this droid going again, it benefits the Order - you know, more than a burnt pile of slag would.”

The stormtrooper seems to consider this, then Poe.

“You’re a pilot,” the trooper observes.

“I’m a pretty good mechanic, too,” Poe assured him, pulling off his own helmet to get a better look at the restraining bolt. He pauses to offer the trooper a winning smile - if they haven’t gotten to threats or reports to superior officers yet, Poe figures his chances of winning the trooper over are pretty good.

“No, I mean - what does a pilot want with a service droid?” the trooper asks him.

Poe reaches into the maintenance hatch on the droid, working to disengage the bolt from the back. To be honest, he isn’t really sure - the whole encounter is pretty impulsive. 

“Honestly?” he asks, confiding in this anonymous trooper he may never see again. “I’m mostly just looking for a productive hobby.”

“Huh,” the trooper says.

Poe gets the restraining bolt off, and reboots the droid with his hands deep in the electronics inside, tossing the bolt back onto the trash barge. 

The droid’s operation light blinks on and then its optic dome swings toward Poe.

“Hey,” Poe said. “Can you still roll?”

The droid affirms in half-garbled binary.

“Come on with me then,” he says, picking his helmet up and putting it back on. 

“Hey, Pilot, wait,” the trooper says.

Poe hesitates, wondering if he’s hit the end of his rope.

“You better take this,” the trooper fishes a bundle out of the barge that Poe recognizes as two of the droid’s arms, taped together in a bundle. The trooper makes sure Poe is looking and then tosses him the bundle.

Poe catches it - not quite deftly, and it may be the first moment he truly understands that the cogs in this machine are all human.

“Thanks,” he says, feeling small and uncertain as he leaves the trooper to the rest of his duty.

-

He repairs the droid over several days, using his free time, cutting into his sleep shift even, to get the arms re-attached and hammer out the bent and warped connections inside of the chassis. 

It gives him something to focus on, other than his precarious situation and what dangers await him if he should be found out.

“Boy,” he tells the droid. “They really did a number on you, huh?”

The inside’s not a complete mess, but it’s close. Poe has to filch a couple of hand tools from the droid service bay in the hangar, a matter of talking his way into and out of the space without attracting too much attention. 

“Your motivator’s practically melted,” Poe tells it, because it’s the sound of his own voice or silence, aboard the Finalizer.

The droid gives him an excuse, even while it’s still inert.

“Somebody had a bad day and took it all out on you, huh?” He pulls the motivator out and studies it. This is no astromech droid, just a labor-oriented service droid, but the motivator has a lot in common with BB-8‘s, and Poe’s confident he can repair it if he takes his time. 

He doubts it’ll be easy to get a replacement part for what amounts to a personal project.

“So, I know Ben Solo is here,” he says, unscrewing all of the tiny screws holding the outer casing on. “And I know that the First Order is treating him like a weapon. Probably he is; I haven’t seen him since we were little, but even then - his family’s all strong with the Force. I always figured he must be, too.”

His words taper off into silence as he works a stubborn screw free. It’s stuck tight and Poe has to drip machine oil patiently into the threads to work it out of the warped casing hole.

“Maybe he’ll remember me,” Poe says, giving it some extra torque. “I mean, I remember him. If he remembers anything at all under that new helmet.”

Poe’s not sure - he’s heard plenty of conversations about Kylo Ren. None of them suggested that he came from anywhere. No one speaks about his past. 

“It could be that he’ll just cut me in half if I walk up to him and say, ‘Hey, I remember you from all our ‘no-one-in-the-Rebellion-has-much-family-left picnics. You’re Ben Solo, right?’”

The silence that answers him seems about right. He pours discharge fluid out of the motivator into the trash chute, looking at the unlit droid indicator lights. The serial number is actually fairly uninspiring. It has no standard unit name, it’s just a string of unrelated numbers that end in 26. He guesses ‘twenty-six’ is better than whatever the droid had been called by the Quartermaster, if anything.

“Yeah, that’s not a good idea,” Poe decides. “I better be subtle. Maybe I can just get close and feel things out.”

Technically, Poe’s quarters are in the junior officers area. It’s not quite the opulent general’s quarters, and he has a feeling that Kylo Ren’s leash keeps him close to the Finalizer’s premier General; Armitage Hux. A sour man with a nasty temper and a constantly nasty expression. There was tension between he and Kylo Ren. If Poe can just find a way to lever it...

_Then what?_ he asks himself. Surely he can’t save Kylo Ren or convince him to give up his secrets. _But maybe I can get close enough to see things. To see the things_ he _sees_.

That would be valuable, surely. Nobody else with his past was likely to have the opportunity.

“I’ll have to figure out his patterns,” Poe decides.

26 doesn’t answer him. Poe’s got it’s power supply sitting on his small - and messy - work desk with the new solder joints curing, and its motivator in four parts. He doesn’t expect any answer.

He can start with the likely places - Poe’s got bridge clearance.

Officer’s mess is - unlikely, he admits, but possible. It would ruin some of the carefully orchestrated First Order mystique if Kylo Ren took his mask off to eat in front of all the officers. 

_Then again_ , Poe thinks, as he mops the last of the oil off the actuator circuit board, _he could eat his fortified protein paste with a straw, if he just thinned it out with his liquid ration supplement._

Poe thinks that’s the worst part of this assignment. Officers are not encouraged to waste precious time or resources with extraneous bodily functions. In short, it’s against policy to shit on duty, and if they could eliminate ( _ha,ha_ ) it altogether, Poe’s pretty sure they would.

He deeply misses Koyo fruit. And _texture_. He misses food with texture.

His lights turn off automatically at 2200 hours, and Poe sighs and puts his work away in the dark. He checks his shared bathroom, locks the door into the neighboring suite, and takes a sonic ‘fresher in the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

He spends another standard week trying to track Kylo Ren’s habits and figuring out at last that he has no official duties - he doesn’t answer to Hux, anyway. He has nothing on any roster.

Instead he shows up and casts a dark shadow over any personnel in his immediate area. Wherever he goes, people hold their breath. Poe’s not really sure why. The Order is in a flurry of activity with some project nearing completion, but Poe learns by the example of others not to ask about it.

He sees two officers sent off to reconditioning for so much as inquiring, and thinks better of asking any questions visibly. Still, if he gets a chance to _see_ anything...

By accident, he discovers Kylo Ren moving through the belly of the Finalizer toward the conference room alone.

He enters the darkened and empty room by himself, and Poe can’t figure it out. He’s authorized to be here - officer’s meetings are held in the vast space and at times the pilots are expected to attend.

These are mostly parade affairs, seminars about loyalty and the glory of the First Order; propaganda about the sins and failings of the Republic. Updates about war criminals the First Order wants for questioning. Always, these contain segments on reporting suspicious or subversive behavior that anyone witnesses in their fellows.

Poe always disregards this - and hopes most of his fellows do, too.

He doesn’t barge in after Kylo Ren, however, instead putting his ear to the chamber door. He can make out some booming sound within - a voice? If it is, it’s amplified beyond the natural carry. It’s also not Kylo Ren’s sonorous, filtered rasp. Poe’s heard it enough times to know it, though Kylo Ren was as spartan with his words as General Hux seemed full of them.

A quieter answer - Poe can’t make out any of it - comes next. Was that Kylo Ren? Through the door, Poe can’t tell.

He retreats to the other side of the hall and waits, checking the chrono on his wrist unit as he does. He figures he can get away with ten minutes or so in the hall without arousing suspicion.

Only six have passed when the door slides open and Kylo Ren strides out. Behind him, the conference room is still dark, but Poe catches the last flickering image of a massive holo-communication. A man in a chair, maybe? Then it’s gone, and he’s alone in the hall with the monster in the First Order’s closet.

An instant of fear overtakes Poe - maybe this private setting would just mean his death has no witnesses. His mouth, as it often has in the past, carries on without him.

“Ben?” he tries.

Kylo Ren wheels on him - he’d emerged distracted, the visor of his mask shifting over Poe without even registering his presence. Now he turns with fury on Poe, snarling like an animal through the amplifying pickups of his mask.

He stabs a hand out into the air and Poe’s body locks up, going rigid with more than just fear. It’s like all of his muscles are stretched out, compelled to extend to their limits by some internal process, now severed from his control. Air rushes out of his lungs; he becomes a plucked string.

With a small gesture, Kylo yanks Poe forward, compelling him through the air with his feet off the ground. It seems to leave Poe’s guts behind, still nailed to the floor where he’d been standing.

It leaves him hanging like a gutted fish at market, displayed for Kylo Ren to examine. For a long moment, Kylo Ren studies Poe. It feels as if he’s looking through Poe’s helmet - maybe even deeper, somehow. As if he were touching Poe, physically, instead of only with the Force.

The need for air burns to life in Poe’s lungs, a low urge that flares to screaming when his attempts to breathe are fruitless.

After a moment, a strange surprise washes over Poe - and he barely has time to register that it’s not _his_ emotion when Kylo Ren drops him.

Poe gasps, doubling over, yanking his helmet off so he can breathe cooler, fresher air. 

“It’s you,” Kylo Ren says.

-

 

Kylo Ren never apologizes for this initial attack. He doesn’t explain his response. Poe, after a short time, comes to realize these bouts of temper grow worse after Kylo spends time alone in the conference room, answering the booming voice. 

They circle each other for a while, each watching the other warily for a few days. Poe follows Kylo sometimes, fascinated by him now; by his power. At times, Kylo Ren appears in the hangar, watching Poe. 

‘No one is allowed to call me that,’ Kylo had told him that first day; then he’d turned in a swirl of black and strode up the hall, vanishing back into the depths of the Star Destroyer.

Now, they just orbit each other, like elliptic moons. Curious, there were enough unanswered questions to merit all that, anyway. Slowly, Poe comes to recognize what it is that draws them back together in the days after that first brush - disappointment.

They are mutually disappointed in each other. Their orbits tighten until they have satisfied their curiosities.

“I don’t understand a lot, twenty-six,” Poe says as he finishes the motivator repairs. “But I think I’ll never understand how the sons of the Rebellion wound up here.”

26 has no answer for him. The lights in his quarters turn off. 

The next day, Kylo Ren corners Poe at the hangar, emerging from the shadows behind Poe’s assigned TIE fighter. It doesn’t quite give Poe a start, but his heart beats a little faster when the glint of silver transforms into the looming presence of Kylo Ren.

“Yes, sir?” Poe asks, wondering why it’s necessary for Kylo to make such an effort at dramatics.

“You don’t belong here,” Kylo Ren’s amplified voice is rendered deeper by the apparatus within the mask, Poe’s sure of it.

What should bring up a surge of panic or a fear for his own self preservation instead rouses only resignation in Poe. Maybe this is all about to end spectacularly in fire and death. The only emotion Poe can summon is somewhere between ‘let it happen’ and ‘bring it on’.

“I’ve got a flight shift in ten,” Poe says, with false confidence. “I’m doing pre-flight checks to be sure this TIE I’m assigned has had the proper maintenance. So, yes, I’m _assigned_ here.”

The tone is so defensive it's almost antagonistic, which Poe is sure isn’t a good idea.

“I mean in the First Order,” Kylo Ren says. “Your parents were-”

“My parents worked for _your_ parents,” Poe cuts him off. He senses it irritates Kylo, watches the angry curl of his fingers in their thick, black gloves.

Ben had slender, delicate hands. The worst aspects of his father’s smuggler’s mitts and his mother’s graceful, blaster-wielding claws. In the gloves, they are transformed to something square and mannish. 

“So, I can work for you,” Poe continues, feeling the shaky ground under foot. “Or does the First Order not know about your parents, either.”

Anger roils up almost tangibly around Kylo now. Now that Poe knows he’s on shaky ground too, some of the fear fades, and Poe steps a little more cautiously. 

“The Republic didn’t have any use for me,” Poe says. “The First Order does. Is that so complicated?”

Kylo Ren seems to consider this, to churn it over in his mind. Poe wonders if he’s mis-stepped by giving Kylo Ren time to think on Republics and _uses_ they might have for him. Wounded birds and their ability to sing, if not fly.

Rashly, Poe reaches out, a sudden motion made at a dangerous animal. It’s a distraction, a shock to both of them when Poe seizes Kylo’s hand and pulls it, a desperate wild move that thrills and terrifies him in the same instant, like the moment between a simulated crash and the instant your instincts save you from it.

He pushes Kylo’s gloved hand under the top of his flight suit, right against the vulnerable small of his back, and lets him feel Poe’s scars. He rarely touches them himself; had hated even a nurse’s clinical hands on them, but he trusts there’s enough memory in Kylo Ren to put the parts together from this intimate brush. It pulls their bodies close, takes some of the leverage of Kylo’s reach and weapon away. Poe knows that won’t matter, but tries to pretend it does as much as being understood - _really _understood - by this beacon from his past.__

__Kylo stops resisting when he registers what’s under his fingers, the long lines of scar tissue corded up in parallel lines to Poe’s spine. When he traces one, he presses hard enough that Poe gasps, cold leather over warm skin, and Kylo doesn’t relent at the sound, even though they’re close enough now that the push of air might find its way through all those yards of constricting fabric._ _

__“You’re damaged,” Kylo Ren says, as if Poe is faulty equipment. ._ _

__“I’m injured,” Poe corrects. “But I can still fly.”_ _

__It sounds petulant even to his own ears. Kylo Ren’s touch lingers at the small of Poe’s back for a moment, then disengages, like the restraint locks that hold TIES in place along the hangar walls. He retrieves his hand as if the contact burns him._ _

__“Prove it,” Kylo Ren says, simply. Poe understands it to mean, ‘prove yourself’._ _

__-_ _

__Poe flies hard his next three missions; unflinching. He sets himself aside like a burden, knowing that eyes are on him. Eyes higher than his immediate superior._ _

__When a Resistance cell makes a desperate bid against the supply lines, Poe doesn’t dare show any mercy; his reports had clearly detailed the strength of the Finalizer. They knew what they were facing, what the attack would cost._ _

__Poe sends two X-Wings plummeting to earth and obliterates two more up in the black. There’s no extraneous chatter over the TIE fighter comms. They do not cover each other. He lines his gunner up for opportunities and keeps them alive._ _

__He even finds joy in it - a dark, guilty thing that roils electric in his belly when he outfoxes the other pilots. He doesn’t know if anyone shares his joy, the comm is silent except for official, clipped missives from the Finalizer._ _

__Poe streaks along parallel to the bridge observation windows, and swears he can feel eyes on him. There is an _attention_ straining in his direction, closing like a cupped palm over his thoughts briefly and scooping along the surface like a net pulls up fish._ _

__Then it’s gone again, and his gunner pulls the trigger on an old A-Wing that strays too far from its pack._ _

__-_ _

__Within the next week he’s summoned to his superior officer. Poe reports, unsure whether or not to worry. He’s kept his records for the Resistance, but not delivered them to the drop. Not with all eyes on him while he moved up the chain - or didn’t. Maybe his performance hadn’t fooled Kylo Ren._ _

__In case he’s about to spend the rest of his very short life as a prisoner of the First Order, Poe gathers up what he has, leaving his code cylinder in his quarters and delivering the information to the drop spot._ _

__He tucks it in behind the loose panel and hopes it’s not the last drop he ever makes. As he leaves the service corridor, he passes a single Stormtrooper. Poe hopes he’s not very attentive. Then again, Poe’s pretty sure he’s not on patrol - which is usually at least two troopers._ _

__He lets it go and rushes back to his quarters to grab his code cylinder and to report - exactly on time - to his XO._ _

__“Captain,” the officer addresses him, and Poe’s almost surprised that she doesn’t use his name - instead, his codes had identified him as he entered and that’s enough to satisfy her._ _

__Poe snaps to attention, feeling a warning twinge in his back as he pulls up too straight, too fast._ _

__“You have been reassigned,” she says, as blandly as if this is an everyday occurrence. For her, it probably is._ _

__“You’ve been assigned to Kylo Ren’s escort detail. You’re trained on Upsilon class ships?” she asks, looking down at her screen, which is most certainly revealing all the answers to the questions she’s about to ask about his qualifications. It’s probably a built in redundancy that she has to ask to make sure, going through the motions of making sure the records are correct._ _

__“I am fully trained and certified on all First Order craft,” Poe says, trying to keep that from sounding like a boast. “I took extra flight-credits since I was already - ah, qualified for most craft.”_ _

__At this, she does look up and Poe could kick himself. He doesn’t want to stand out as a person to her. Poe goes quiet, reminding himself not to volunteer any other information she doesn’t specifically ask for._ _

__“He asked for you personally,” she says, flatly. “Your performance has been adequate. Your duties will include flying the Upsilon class shuttle when he requires or as an escort for it in a TIE. Aside from that, you are relieved from all other duties.”_ _

__“Ma’am?” Poe asks, confused._ _

__“As one of his escorts you’re always on duty. Any time you receive orders, you are to fly or fill them without question,” she explains. “All of his missions and any of your duties related to them are code five classified.”_ _

__It’s only then that it really sinks in what Poe’s been assigned to. He’s become one of the in-boys. One of the crowd trusted to be silent and follow even the most morally objectionable orders without question._ _

__“Yes ma’am,” Poe says, feeling a knot in his belly. He’d wanted this, hadn’t he?_ _

__“That means of course you are not to discuss any individual missions or assignments with anyone outside of your new command structure, or unless ordered to do so by Kylo Ren or someone in your command structure.”_ _

__“Yes ma’am,” Poe repeats._ _

__“You’re dismissed. Remember that as of this moment forward you are always on duty,” she reminds. “Your code cylinders and comms must always be active and on your person.”_ _

__“Yes ma’am,” He says, enacting a crisp salute that aches in the small of his back, glad that his helmet must hide most of his inner turmoil as he leaves._ _

__-_ _

__“You’re early,” Kylo Ren says as Poe arrives for duty._ _

__The big Upsilon shuttle is roosting in the center of the hangar, a menacing black hawk that looms over the ships around it with an unarguable authority._ _

__“I don’t trust technicians,” Poe answers, without looking up from the diagnostics on screen._ _

__Kylo Ren moves closer. His steps are heavy and careless on the decking of the ship as he approaches, looming over Poe’s shoulder._ _

__He supposes it should make him feel uncomfortable. Poe just leans aside, as he might have in summers past when Ben Solo tagged along with Leia on her occasional visits to Kes and Yavin IV, for the touchbase get togethers the Rebellion had held. It’s not the right move, with a superior ranking officer, but the instinctive one. He is not here for his strict adherence to the First Order code of behavior. He is here, like the others on Kylo Ren’s escort, because of his skill and connections and willingness to climb._ _

__The First Order tolerates a certain sort of ambition and Poe tells himself he has it for the sake of getting into a better position to supply the Resistance with better information._ _

__Take the next chance - and the next. On and on until the chances are spent._ _

__“Not even _my_ technicians?” Kylo Ren asks, soft and sonorous. His voice is trailed by the click of the transmitter in his helmet. It amplifies and distorts the sound, but Poe can hear some of the sound of Kylo’s real voice beneath it, from this close. _ _

__“Not _any_ ,” Poe says. He checks the warm up protocol readouts on the HUD. All parameters normal. He puts the engines through their paces in the dock, after transmitting a Test Code to the launch control under his own authority. It is granted unquestioned._ _

__Kylo Ren doesn’t answer him. Poe, finally satisfied with the less familiar ship’s ability to perform, sits obediently in the pilot’s seat without further comment. He hasn’t been addressed._ _

__A small troop of bucketheads enters the back of the shuttle, silent except for their clattering armor. They are a grim, stiff group, mirthless and solemn. Not that Poe has seen Stormtroopers exhibit much personality, but these seem even less inclined._ _

__At last, the silver-clad form of the _Finalizer’s_ elite squad Captain enters. Of all the Stormtroopers, only she has a name. Phasma._ _

__“You’re clear to depart,” she addresses Poe as if he was a droid in the clipped, core-world accent that most high-ranking First Order officers seem to either adopt or have naturally._ _

__Poe doesn’t question his lack of a co-pilot. He doesn’t need one - it’s a transport run, point a - the _Finalizer_ \- to some as yet unknown point B. A set of unfamiliar coordinates on rim territory._ _

__He doesn’t recognize them. Poe signals their TIE escort, three red-striped SF birds that hum to life and disengage to precede the shuttle out of the hangar. He wishes he was in one of them; a more private, more maneuverable craft._ _

__Instead, he’s in the high-value target. He lifts off, and follows them out, wondering briefly if he’d be of the best service to the Resistance by slamming this craft and everyone in it full speed into the shield generator that isolates the hangar bay from the vacuum and black beyond._ _


	4. Chapter 4

Poe’s first impression is that they have come to the middle of nowhere. It is an uninhabited system on the very edge of known space, erected hyperspace lanes seeming to lead nowhere. He can see a few planets - only one grey-silver of any respectable size, and a twin-star at the core, dull yellow and cooling toward the red of dwarfs. It leaves the surrounding planetary bodies icy and dead looking. His readouts suggest the surface temperature of each is unable to sustain life without protection.

“Take us in, pilot,” Captain Phasma instructs, as Poe takes in the surroundings and wonders what they’re here for.

“Uh,” Poe starts, before he can stop himself. He decides to look down at his instruments before he makes a fool of himself by asking ‘ _in to what?_ ’

Sure enough, they show a set of approach coordinates, and Poe follows them blindly to their destination, remembering his orders about information and questions. 

When he turns the ship toward the silver-gray snow covered planet, it’s then he realizes - the belt at her middle is not a series of debris rings orbiting like he first thought, but a man-made orifice carved from the rocky, ice-covered mantle and fortified with metallic apertures.

At the heart of him, the sinking part that still belongs to him, Poe knows this thing. It’s not the Death Star, but a massive tribute out here in the Unknown territories and everything inside Poe recoils from it.

He lands on an airfield raised from the icy surface, and even the controlled temperature inside the shuttle seems to have dropped ten degrees. The stresses of flying, combined with the cold and the landing, wake an ache deep in his lower back.

He cuts the engines, and lets the breath he’s been holding out very slowly. He’s afraid to touch the planet’s surface, as if it would make a mirage into reality. Like the old tales of Fae places where pilots crashed, which could never be found again once they’d escaped. 

“You are to remain with the ship, pilot,” Phasma orders. She does not have to specify. The TIES have remained in orbit. 

Poe looks to Kylo Ren for confirmation. He does not fully report to Phasma - she’s in charge of Infantry. She out ranks him, but outside his chain of command.

Kylo Ren does not countermand her order, nor does he verbally affirm it. Bureaucracy. The division of stormtroopers leaves the shuttle, and for a moment, Kylo Ren trails behind with his attention sharp as needles in the back of Poe’s neck. 

His heavy steps approach, and Poe expects a warning about what he’s seen; a reminder (a useless one) of his oath of secrecy.

Instead, Kylo shoves him forward out of his seat, an irresistible force exerted with the barest touch of his fingertips. Poe is shoved forward over the HUD console, pressed down against the controls with the yoke bruising against his thighs and belly.

His thoughts scatter in all directions like birds flushed from the bush, lost to him and any hunter, or so he hopes.

Kylo yanks the hem of his flight suit up up, exposing the small of Poe’s back, the track-lines of repairs and re-repairs alongside his spine. He does not have to spare a hand to hold Poe in place. Poe - with his face pressed against the relative positioning screen, can see Kylo’s free hand in his lap, draped casually as Kylo crouches to study Poe’s injury in wrapt fascination. 

“This could be repaired,” Kylo Ren says, a low intimate growl. A panther to a cub. He strokes the scars with his thumb and index fingers bridging the dip of Poe’s spine and it both hurts and thrills him. He finds out he can breathe when he gasps, and the pressure forces his next sound into a groan.

It’s as if Kylo Ren has found some switch to flip that turns the living electricity back on inside Poe. The aperture that restores him to reality, that renders Poe back from an automaton to a living, sentient being.

It floods his system with electric heat, flaring up bright and brilliant - at least half fear.

“I don’t,” Poe starts. His mouth is wet, salivary. Like the moments before a meal or vomiting.

“You don’t trust technicians,” Kylo Ren purrs. 

Suddenly, the touch is lighter, sweet-soft strokes of Kylo’s gloved fingers. It soothes away the ache he’d pressed in and then the pressure holding Poe down eases.

When he opens his eyes and sits up, Kylo Ren has already left, only the ghost of his touch remaining on Poe’s skin.

He catches his breath and waits for them, hearing his gasping rattling around in the silence of the shuttle. Poe pulls his helmet off and straightens the rest of his uniform, breathing the cold air until his heart stops racing, feeling how dangerously _good_ his back feels now. 

It’s the quiet that fosters the rest of the idea.

-

They return with an extra body in tow - whatever the original errand was, Poe won’t likely ever know. They leave several of the troopers and return with a uniformed man with a distinguished haircut and a tattooed and scarred face that speaks of an expansive life outside of the regulations of the First Order.

Like Poe, he wears no insignia. Unlike him, he goes bare-faced. He marches onto the shuttle mid-sentence, an older man with the stink of the venerated Imperials carried under his cologne and a three quarters full wine-glass in his hand. 

“I’ve been tracking this Tekka character across most of the known Galaxy,” the man is saying, his tone a calculated measure of irritation balanced with confidence - the chore was tiring, but he would surely succeed. Poe sees the projected outcome clearly between the man’s charismatic bearing and the volume and tone of his voice, and does not even question whether or not he will succeed at whatever it is he’s talking about.

“Just remember not to overstep your boundaries, Agent Terex,” Captain Phasma says stiffly. “The First Order values-”

“Don’t bother,” Terex tells her, settling heavily into the empty co-pilot’s chair of the shuttle and giving Poe (who realizes only then that the orientation of his helmet visor must accentuate where he’s staring) a cheeky salute with his wine glass.

“The First Order can value whatever it wants, but above all that it values _results_ ,” Terex continues in Phasma’s icy, displeased silence. “Which I happen to get.”

Poe turns back to the console, his back aching a low pulse from sitting too long and Kylo Ren’s earlier pressure. He begins the takeoff process when he sees that he has the all clear from ground control. This show isn’t for him. 

Agent Terex has neatly trapped Phasma; she can’t appeal to Kylo Ren without visibly surrendering her authority. As he is a creature outside of official rank, it would only make Terex’s case that results were valued over uncreative loyalty.

Phasma is smart enough to see the trap, and not so angry that she falls into it anyway like a charging Reek blinded by a visible target. She holds her anger in silence and Kylo Ren - maybe the true audience of the show - has nothing to add.

“Anyway,” Terex continues, gesturing with his glass. “I’m off to a Prison colony next. Megalox Beta.”

“Why?” Phasma demands.

“To look for the information we don’t have, my dear Captain,” Terex says, indulging in a long sip of wine from his glass. “That’s there the trail leads, of course.”

Phasma answers with a long, displeased silence. Poe guides the shuttle free of the base’s gravity, quietly drowning his awe that a weapon could be large enough to generate it’s own planetary _gravity_.

“Oh, Pilot,” Terex calls, catching Poe’s attention with the almost careless levity in his voice. Terex pointed through the main viewport at a nasty looking spear of a ship in orbit around the base, which Poe’s HUD labels ‘ _Carrion Spike_ ’.

“That’s my stop, please,” he says, in a tone that makes it a request and an order both.

-

 

Poe has no idea what to make of Terex, but even as the man is taking his time wandering off the shuttle, Poe is mentally composing his report for the Resistance. He’s so focused on this that when Kylo Ren’s fingers brush over his lower back like a reminder of his earlier trespass - or perhaps just drawn to the ache in the injury like a bat to the scent of blood - Poe jumps enough to bark his knee on the underside of the pilot’s console.

This serves for two things - first, the sharp, new pain makes the old vanish briefly, and it’s a surprisingly sweet relief. Second, when Poe looks up, Agent Terex’s eyes have honed in on Poe with the ice-chip blue sharpness of a falcon. A small smile is slashed across his face like a tally-mark, and Poe knows - somehow he _knows_ that Terex had seen and comprehended the touch that caused Poe’s sudden motion.

He thinks about this look later in bed, as he cradles the single stiff pillow against his face and waits for the slow pulses of agony to stretch out of his back.

He’d seen animal curiosity on Terex’s rough, aristocratic features. A childish expression of calculation; he’d seen a toy that wasn’t his but that he wanted on only that virtue - to have something that belonged to Kylo Ren.

This is the world of the First Order, beyond the rank and file. A game of maneuvering into position like Dejarik. Poe’s stomach twists - but he knows he’ll have to endure such contortions of his morals to advance. He wants Terex’s information. He can trade a coup to count.

As Poe tries to sleep, no relief comes, no matter how he stretches or coddles his back. Finally he reaches back and presses hard against his injuries, until he gasps at it, driving the pain deeper into his muscles, rubbing and coaxing at the stiff tendons and rough scar tissue - like Kylo Ren had with Poe pressed flat against the console.

He resolves that if he sees Terex again, he will make good on the opportunity. It’s important to the Resistance to have whatever information they can.

Poe closes his eyes into the pillow and presses harder, but he only finds any relief when he makes the same circular motions over the scars that Kylo Ren had, almost overloading the pain receptors.

-

In the morning, Poe finds himself with free time that he can’t quite fill. For a time, he works on the droid. He almost has it all back together.

“It’s like I don’t know what to do with myself anymore,” Poe tells 26, as he works on re-soldering a join within the droid’s internals. 

“I never really liked it when someone barked orders at me all day,” Poe admits. “Even when I was-”

It feels wrong to talk about the past here, even to the inert form of 26. There’s no real knowing how much the First Order monitors him. So Poe lets his words drop, and picks up on a different train of thought.

“It’s not like there’s many hobbies,” Poe says, before he reaches up to flick the switch on to wake 26 up for the first time since the droid had been sent to the trash heap.

It would probably be kinder to wipe 26‘s memories of the past. Poe feels that way about himself, some days.

26 powers up, making it halfway through the self-introduction spiel as it boots, before it gets trapped in a logic cycle, repeating itself.

< _I am unit 41728526 reporting for - reporting for - reporting forrrrrr-_ >

Poe shuts it down, feeling suddenly very tired. There is no point to this restoration. The droid’s binary is harsh and efficient and without any familiar ring. He understood the communications, but it left him feeling more hollow than accomplished.

Frustrated, Poe ejects the motivator and begins to search it for the kludged connection. _The logical thing to do,_ Poe tells himself, _is to take it back to the incinerator and throw it back in._

But Poe finds that idea no more or less appealing than continuing his efforts at repair. He’s forged on this far; going back is just as pointless. He sighs, pulling the motivator open again. At least it will fill his time between missions to-

His comm chimes. Poe is called to duty and finds it to be such a relief that for a moment he doesn’t care what it is. He’d fight a whole squadron of Resistance X-Wings just to get out of here.

He can’t know that when he sets the motivator down on his workbench that he won’t be able to touch it again for nearly two weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry but not sorry for wine-mom (wine dad?) Terex.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which this fic earns its Explicit rating.

Poe has scant few details to report on the massive base - and also a sense that his moves after the first revelation of trust are being watched.

Maybe that’s because he seems to turn every corner and encounter Kylo Ren. Watching. Silent.

Poe briefly wonders if he just studies Poe’s schedule - such as it is - or goes to the trouble of using the Force to locate him.

It should make him nervous when he rounds corner and comes face-to-face with whatever sort of dark creature Ben Solo has become. He isn’t even fully in uniform, his helmet back in his quarters.

“Come with me,” Kylo says without space for argument. Poe does - he has become a dark creature himself. A shadow cast by his own potential.

“You can just ask,” Poe dares.

Kylo Ren leads him toward the hangar bay without answering. The first flare of bravado fades quickly and Poe echoes the silence, follows Kylo Ren into the belly of the Upsilon.

He begins to feel like a dog that knows his nose is about to be rubbed in it. What ‘it’ is, he’s uncertain. The shuttle is not the scene of any of his crimes.

Once inside, he finds the hatch closing behind them and realizes he must have been drafted to fly a mission. This strikes Poe - Kylo Ren’s father was Han Solo, a talented pilot. Had he never taught Ben to fly himself?

Poe heads for the pilot’s seat instinctively, moving past Kylo Ren to get there. A motion in the periphery of his vision causes him to flinch away.

Kylo Ren finishes pulling off his helmet, revealing his narrow face, framed by a mane of long, wavy hair. Dour and black, different from the sun-bleached color Poe remembers. His dark, serious eyes fix on Poe, and for the first time as adult they measure each other with their own eyes. 

“You’ve changed,” Kylo says. Strangely, it’s his teeth; the shape his mouth makes to reveal both upper and lower incisors - that cements the memories of Ben with Kylo Ren, revealing an image of how the youth has transformed.

Kylo Ren looks not like a man grown, but a boy tempered. He doesn’t look like his father.

“Don’t think that,” Kylo Ren hisses.

“Sorry,” Poe says, leaning back. “You’ve changed too. Who wouldn’t, after all these years?”

Kylo makes no move to sit, and it leaves Poe in a place between. Hesitant. Does he stand? Sit? He wishes he’d remembered to get his helmet, and wonders when he’d started to feel naked without it. 

Silence pulls into tension and tearing between them. Kylo Ren’s eyes burn into Poe, like he’s waiting for something. Poe fights the silence and the self-destructive urge it pulls up in him to admit everything.

Finally, Kylo Ren moves, like an animal that’s been holding its breath underwater reaching for the surface. He lifts his hand in a half-curled claw, and Poe expects the Force to touch him, but instead Kylo Ren’s gloved fingers brush over Poe’s cheek. He does his best not to gasp; inside, his heart hammers, a running prey animal at the end of its endurance.

“I always wanted you,” Kylo Ren says. “I didn’t know _how_ when we last parted ways, but I _coveted_...”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. The last time they’d crossed paths, Ben was fifteen to Poe’s seventeen.

He remembers that they’d spent a few hours in silence; Ben had been sullen and detached, lost in his own thoughts that day. They’d gathered fallen branches and brush, Poe working with dedication to his home and Ben mulishly.

They’d lit the gathered brush to burn it down to good ash for the fields, and Poe remembers that in the firelight, Ben watched him for a long time. 

He has the same expression on his face now; a depth of something that Poe can’t quantify. His hand on Poe’s cheek is a steady contact, keeping their gazes together. His thumb brushes over the curve of Poe’s cheekbone, and then his hand slides over Poe’s neck, up behind his ear into his hair, jerking Poe forward against Kylo Ren.

Poe doesn’t resist. A sick thrill goes through him; a complex and twisted form that emotion may cling to later. For now he just allows it - it’s _something_ in a vast sea of nothing, an connection and contact he hasn’t had since his injury. Something familiar in the new landscape of his life.

Kylo Ren pulls their mouths together fiercely, and Poe goes willingly, opening his mouth into the kiss and letting Kylo Ren pull him up onto his toes, taking Poe’s mouth deeply and thoroughly. It’s less a kiss than a claim, and Poe finds his back bent in a way that _aches_ in the old damage and a sexual urge in the pit of his belly.

This goes on longer than Poe could guess - until his hand digs in under the rough, scratching fabric of the cowl at Kylo’s neck and gather up handfuls to hang on. He steadies himself there, leaning his body along the lean angles of Kylo’s chest.

Finally, Kylo pushes him back a step, looking at Poe in silence. 

Looking for something.

Poe tries to ask what, but Kylo steals his words with a gesture. He doesn’t use the Force, and Poe doesn’t press him. The looming idea that he _can_ at any time deters Poe from unnecessary questions.

“You’re dismissed,”Kylo Ren says, eyes intense, voice rough.

Poe steps back, shaken. Is this - is it an expected duty of his? He hesitates on that point, falling into a loose parade-rest as he tries to find footing on top of that thin moral line.

Kylo’s mouth - red, dark and flush, twists into a frustrated snarl.

“I didn’t mean that,” he says, picking his helmet up off the console where he’d left it.

“What did you-” Poe starts, before he manages to stop himself.

Kylo puts his helmet back on, and it contracts over his face with a faint pneumatic hiss that fills the shuttle cockpit. Poe’s thoughts stray to the way they’d relocate Ralsknars on Yavin IV - a muzzle over their dangerous jaws. Absently, he rubs his own mouth, finding it unbitten.

“I mean this is not the time,” Kylo Ren’s voice is transformed again.

He turns briskly and the shuttle door opens for him at an absent gesture of his hand, a minor expense of the Force.

At the end of the ramp, he hesitates.

“We have a mission tomorrow,” he says, and then continues on, leaving Poe to struggle with what it might mean to be so close to Kylo Ren as to have earned an unprecedented preference.

He knows he’ll be flying in the morning, so he takes his thoughts back to his quarters to drown them in the refresher.

-

Terex catches him outside the Upsilon, this time appearing aboard the Finalizer without so much as a warning puff of smoke. He must be reporting in on his mission - Poe notes that it looks like he’s in a good mood.

He looks like the sort of person that can make a bad mood contagious.

“Would you like to get a drink, Captain Dameron?” he asks, leaning against the side of the shuttle as casually as if it were a rock that Poe has happened past and not like Poe had landed it there ten minutes earlier.

“I’m on duty,” Poe says, after he reminds himself that having information is Agent Terex’s job.

Terex arches both his eyebrows and looks into the empty belly of the shuttle. “I thought you just got _off_ ”

He lets his tone muse into a suggestive register, watching Poe from the corner of his eye.

Poe’s got his helmet on - and he’s learned a certain mastery over his body language. He keeps it relaxed, here. Too eager would send a message of desperation. Disinterest would - Poe _hopes_ at least - send Terex away. 

This is like when his father taught Poe to fish - Poe suspects for both of them - setting the hook to pull in the prize.

“I’m always on duty,” Poe explains, letting Terex wonder about any implications of that. “But I wouldn’t mind some company.”

“Such loyalty to your orders,” Terex says, lauding Poe with praise. “Come along with me, I should be able to arrange at least one drink undisturbed.”

Here’s the last crossroads. Poe could back off now, keep playing a lower stakes game that has consistent returns. He doesn’t have to go this far. He hasn’t been asked to; knows if he asked his contact, they’d say _not_ to.

But these are the rules they play by in the First Order. By asking Poe to enter as a member, it’s almost implicit that he play the game to the best of his abilities - and by all of the rules. If he can kill for his cover, this is a lesser concession.

Besides, there is a magnetism and maturity to Terex, a pride that Poe instinctively feels will translate to counting his partner’s sexual satisfaction like coup.

“I’d like that,” Poe says, allowing his tone to drop to confidentiality.

Terex leads him brazenly from the hangar without a glance back, without watching to see if any other eyes are on them. It’s a bold move - especially in the First Order. Such secrets usually have power - not over Terex. He _wants_ to be seen.

His quarters are exorbitantly furnished by First Order standards, and Poe’s so used to drab, dull gray emptiness that even these subdued colors of luxury here - wine reds and navy blues, nothing vibrant - seem brilliant against the drab walls.

“We knew how to reward ourselves in the Empire,” Terex says, smugly. “Hard work deserves comfort, anyway.”

He pulls the cork on a decanter of wine set on a low cabinet along the one massive viewport window in his room. It makes a noisy, deeply lewd _plunk_ as it lets go.

“Make yourself comfortable, Captain. I know you had a bit of a flight,” Terex coaxes as he pours two glasses of rich, red wine.

Poe pulls off his flight helmet, not used to being free of it outside of his quarters, and then his gloves so he can run his fingers over the polished wood - it’s been so long since he’s touched something that wasn’t metal or plasteel. 

“Oh,” Terex says, calling Poe’s attention up from the smooth, cool surface. The corner of Terex’s mouth has quirked one edge of his thin mustache up in pleased surprise. “You’re handsome under there. _That’s_ a plus.” 

It’s been so long since anyone’s said anything like this to Poe that he’s almost forgotten how to believe it, but he warms to the complement, enjoying the implication of worth. Terex reaches up with a bare hand and strokes rough fingers over Poe’s cheek. 

“You never know what’s under all those helmets,” Terex says, brushing his thumb over Poe’s pink-flushed neck before he offers Poe one of the glasses of wine.

-

Terex proves to be even more considerate as a lover than Poe expected. He clucks once at the injury on Poe’s back, and then reveals a lean, hard body, well decorated with the harsh scars of his own life; his shoulders and back are peppered with them, his belly adorned with a long slash that could be a twin in length and remarkableness to the one over his eye.

By mutual agreement, they ignore each other’s imperfections. They lay on his huge bed on their sides, easy and slow. Terex only kisses him once and his mouth tastes wine-soaked to a depth Poe can’t quite fathom. It’s beyond the capacity of one wine-glass anyway.

After that he seems satisfied to touch Poe’s body with broad strokes of his palms over wine-warm swaths of Poe’s chest and belly while Poe reciprocates over the lean planes of Terex’s chest, before Terex reaches down to get hold of his stiffening cock. Terex has a rough palm, his calloused skin catching deliciously along the soft skin of Poe’s cock - leaving him hard and panting as Terex pushes his thumb back and forth through the thin precum gathering and sliding loose.

“I hardly mean to insult you,” Terex says, breathing a ticklish breath against the back of Poe’s neck, voice low and sultry. “You seem like a well-rounded sort. You _have_ done this before, haven’t you?” 

Poe has - he _is_ a well-rounded sort. He assures Terex that he can, arching his body against the wiry strength cradling it.

“Polite to ask anyway,” Terex says, lightly, and then brushes his teeth against the back of Poe’s neck, a pinching kiss of contact.

It sinks the hook hard into Poe’s middle, pulling up lust.

“ _That’s_ it,” Terex coaxes. He seems to like the sound of his own voice overlapping Poe’s gasps. Poe finds it faintly annoying - 

“There you go,” Terex continues, as Poe pushes back against him - 

until Terex reaches down with well-slicked fingers to begin prying Poe open, all delicious pressure and quick-fading sting. Poe breathes out as Terex pushes deeper, well choreographed. Terex is paying attention to the cues Poe’s body is giving, a surprising upside to the encounter.

Terex chuckles, as if reading Poe’s thoughts, scissoring his fingers open. “There’s more to information than words, you know - reading a target is just as important.”

His voice is a low, husky purr in combination with his twisting fingers, sending a shiver down Poe’s back and he kicks his knees apart wider, opening access for Terex to push deeper. _If he just keeps talking, maybe..._

“It’s all about knowing what someone wants, and to a lesser extent, what they _really_ don’t want,” Terex adds, punctuating his point by sliding a third finger into Poe, hooking toward his belly until Poe’s prostate is trapped under his fingers, sparking up pleasure, white hot behind Poe’s eyelids and he gasps out, reaching forward to claw the sheets up They’re smooth and soft, _cool_ fabric beneath his warm cheek.

“With proper application of both, you can get anything,” Terex purrs, satisfied with Poe’s response. He can feel the firm curve of Terex’s erection sliding eagerly against his inner thigh.

He wiggles his fingers inside Poe, his other hand wrapping around Poe’s middle to pull their bodies together so Terex can reach the shell of Poe’s ear with his teeth just as he fists Poe’s cock.

Poe gasps - it feels good enough to drive the low ache out of him, a sweet, intoxicating distraction that Poe wants to go on and on.

“Are you ready?” Terex asks against the stinging-sensitive lobe of Poe’s ear. 

Poe nods, up-down, wordless.

Terex slowly withdraws his fingers, giving Poe a steadying pat on the hip before he lines himself up, guiding with one hand on his own cock and the other pressing on Poe’s belly as an anchor point. Poe arches his back and opens his knees, easing the way as the head of Terex’s cock pushes in with a sudden, satisfying pop and Poe groans out, feeling it like something final.

“Yes,” Terex says, breathless, “I agree.”

He put both his hands on Poe’s hips, giving small, smooth, shallow thrusts to loosen him up the rest of the way, sliding just a little deeper every time.

It blanks Poe’s mind out, even Terex’s ongoing monologue for himself loses meaning - though it serves as a sort of permission for Poe’s constant animal groaning, drowning his incoherent ‘yes’ and ‘oh’ affirmations. 

The slow, steady build toward orgasm, Terex achieves by skillful application of the angles of their hips together and a gentle pressure above the base of Poe’s cock, low on his belly. It keeps him brushing over, not jabbing against, the gland he’d worked earlier with his fingers.

It turns off everything but those sensations in Poe’s brain, driving low ‘ah-ah-ah’s out of him in ascending pleasure as Poe rides against the edge of orgasm and Terex’s thrusts grow more insistent. He seems to know just when to get his hand on Poe’s cock to help him past tipping and into plunging. 

“Come on,” Terex coaxes, sounding out of breath now. “Just for _me_ , Captain.”

Poe spills over into his grip, gasping as Terex pistons into him two final times, deep and sure as he hit his own orgasm. The flood of release not only splashes against the sheets and spatters Terex’s fingers and Poe’s belly, but it leaves Poe’s body loose and soft, draining the tension out of his muscles in the heated, blissful aftermath as he catches his breath.

Terex recovers faster, as Poe clings to the pain-free moments to melt over the sheets.

“Now _that’s_ a lovely picture,” Terex observes, before he gets up to see to his hygiene and a fresh glass of wine.

Later, as they both recover before a mutually agreed upon second round, Terex refills Poe’s glass with a heady red wine as he settles back, propped up at the shoulders with a pile of pillows. They are both thus fortifying themselves for further exertion.

“So,” Poe says, lounging satiated, his flaccid body comfortable in its nest. “Tell me how dangerous your mission is?”

“Oho,” Terex lifts his glass to his mouth, sounding like he’s just put the whole puzzle together. “You little minx. _This_ is a new trick in Ren’s stable - more flies with honey, eh?”

He looks Poe up and down, appraising, and Poe’s glad his embarrassment won’t seem out of place even though Terex has assumed incorrectly. Terex actually looks pleased - impressed with Poe, and probably with himself.

“You can tell your master that I’ll find Skywalker,” Terex says. “ _Just_ like I’ve said I will. Tekka knows his whereabouts. I’m sure of it, and so is the Resistance.”

Poe’s guts plunge. Is Terex playing with him? _Skywalker?_ It serves Poe right that his clumsy efforts are rewarded with such a bald lie. _No one’s seen Luke Skywalker for years._

“Oh, smile,” Terex says, reaching out to palm the back of Poe’s neck in a self-congratulatory gesture. His grin is quite wicked. “This has been mutually beneficial. I won’t mention I saw through your ruse. It was worth it anyway. I hope Ren gets terribly jealous.”

He leans back, finishing his wine. “You can come back whenever you like of course, and I’ll always give you _something_.”

It’s delivered with a smile that has all the charm of a predator’s when it’s decided it likes you. Poe, with a twist of both pleasure and anger, believes him.

-


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a full moon and my lost cat was returned to me today, so here's an extra chapter because I had time to proof read it. <3 (Also explicit)

In the morning, Poe’s comm goes off early, and he has to dress quickly in yesterday’s flight uniform and jam his helmet on his mussed hair as he limps to the hangar. He realizes only belatedly that he’s missed an information drop when he passes a lone stormtrooper headed down into one of the service corridors.

_What would I even have put in it?_ Poe chastises himself. _Dear Leia, the First Order is on the_ Case of the Lost Jedi _and they seem pretty serious about it._

Probably not. 

He reports to the TIE bay and goes over the fighter he’s assigned with a strict attention to detail, reviewing the service log and double checking previous pilot commentary against repairs enacted and current diagnostics.

His gunner grows impatient. “If you delay the launch for the Upsilon-”

“I won’t,” Poe says, consenting at last to this particular fighter. He knows Kylo Ren has not yet even entered the hangar; pilots and technicians still chatter in the background.

When Kylo steps heavily onto the decking, that all changes. Silence emerges. Poe’s body feels grimy and unwashed under his dirty flight suit. His skin is tacky in places - his thighs, his belly - with dried cum.

Despite all that, he feels elevated to a new level. Poe is ready to fly; he hardly cares what the mission is. These are the cornerstones of his life; the feeling of resistance in the foot controls and yoke as he goes through the startup sequence. The overworked and sore feeling in his thighs. 

The raw, overstretched feeling of too much sex inflicted - willingly - on a body unused to such strenuous activity. It sharpens his senses, like pulling a bag off his head, leaves him lean and hungry and ready for action. 

When he gets the go he blasts them out of the hangar at a speed that leaves the rest of the escort trying to catch up.

His co-ordinates suggest they’re headed to a staging area, OR-Kappa-2722. The hyperspace jump is short, but he finds that the other end is a seething mass of activity. Four Super Star Destroyers hover close to the rocky planet with the numeric designation, and he has to answer a request for his trajectory to escort the Upsilon through all the patrolling TIES. 

He’d sit up and take note, if his ass could take it. As it is, Poe glances at the co-ordinates again, trying to commit them to memory before he has to land on the Star Destroyer that’s sending him landing codes and instructions.

_Just making an impression,_ he realizes - both Kylo and the First Order are posturing. Kylo by appearing with his half-wing escort of SF TIES, and the First Order receiving his visit with this show of force.

“I’d like to see if it’s this well patrolled when the boss _isn’t_ here,” Poe says, idly speculating to his otherwise silent gunner.

“What?” his gunner asks.

“Do you think this is all a show for us?” Poe wonders.

His gunner does not reveal himself to be human by speculating. Poe thinks of all those parade seminars about aberrant behavior and follows suit into silence.

The port hangar of the _Imperative_ is practically empty, the landing pads swept clear and the welcoming party waiting at attention on the central walkway. A dour-faced general waits for Kylo as Poe lands, feeling the strain of the flight in his back suddenly - like a return to gravity.

He disembarks immediately from the TIE, hopping out to access the external controls - he intends to make a copy of the flight log.

“Kylo Ren,” the General standing on deck projects his voice to be heard over the way Kylo’s boots ring on the steel decking. “Welcome to the Imperative.”

Kylo does not engage in any trivialities like greetings. “General, how is your progress with the weapons recovered from the _Ysira Zyde_?” 

Poe’s attention perks, but he keeps his eyes on the maintenance panel on the side of the TIE. To excuse his actions, he files a false report about accelerator control. 

“We are progressing at a satisfactory pace in replicating and distributing the technology we recovered,” the General answers. Poe can hear their voices moving away, and shifts to follow as far as he can, around the near side of the TIE.

“It’s not a pace that Supreme Leader Snoke is satisfied with,” Kylo Ren’s synthetic voice emerges in tones clipped with displeasure. ‘You have yet to deliver-”

“You may assure the Supreme Leader that we have developed a weapon that can resist a lightsaber blade,” the General dares to interrupt Kylo with this accomplishment.

A stony silence answers, and Poe risks a look from under the wing off his TIE. At the end of the row of stormtroopers still at attention, Kylo and the General of the _Imperative_ face off. 

Every line of Kylo Ren bleeds violence, a warning that he will not be disrespected in this. Poe reads some of the youth he remembers, the weaknesses of Ben Solo. 

“A bold promise,” Kylo says, his curled fingers twitching toward his own lightsaber.

“You may test the prototype Z6 baton to your heart’s content while you’re here, Ren,” the General says. “I have arranged for a demonstration so that you may adequately report our progress to the supreme leader.”

“Tread carefully, General,” Kylo warns. He hesitates, then.

_Imperator’s_ General mistakes that for the end of what Kylo Ren has to say. “I have done as I was asked, Ren. I am confident you will find our work with the recovered weapons favorable, if you’ll follow me...”

Kylo doesn’t answer. His shoulders are hunched like an angry Loth-cat’s, an image made more clear by his all black clothes and hood.

Suddenly, he turns his head, looking right at Poe as if sensing his attention. Poe is caught staring and he feels as frozen as he had been the first time he’d felt the full brunt of Kylo’s attention. Poe’s heart skips a beat; his mouth goes dry. For an excruciating few seconds he feels like he’s become utterly opaque to that void-gaze. 

Then his comm crackles to life.

“Hey, pilot,” his gunner says, coldly. “Will you get back in here? You’re not even cleared to disembark yet.”

With the spell broken - if it wasn’t all in Poe’s head - he lets out a shaky breath.

“Yeah,” Poe says, because it will feel safer inside the cockpit and he wants the familiar sensation of the yoke in his grip. He climbs back in quickly despite the protests of his back, flight log data added to his suit’s internal memory.

-

When they return to the _Finalizer_ , Poe’s thoughts are running along well-worn repetitive ruts. It has been a long mission, a lot of waiting, and he hadn’t taken as much advantage of sleep the night prior as he had sex.

His plan is to get back to his quarters, write up his report and attach the co-ordinates from his flight log, then get it to the drop point and sleep. It’s become a mantra in his mind, feeling like each new repetition of the steps is accompanied by the next hammer blow of some big, dull nail into his spine.

Poe is so preoccupied with the pain of too much sitting and the information he’s gotten that it practically consumes him with the need to warn the Resistance. A secret staging platform for First Order weapons development meant more than just one kind of trouble.

The First Order making efforts against the New Republic, even such secretive and clandestine ones as stealing weapons shipments is a bold action. As of yet - to this point, the Order has been a sheathed and defensive blade. A blaster with a full charge pack, but the safety on.

Actions like these suggest they are almost ready for those days to end. Perhaps they are not yet openly on the attack, but ready for open hostilities - with trust in their plans and preparedness.

If they really are designing weapons to withstand lightsabers, maybe they _are_ really looking for Luke Skywalker, which meant the information he got from Terex is good.

“Captain,” a harsh voice interrupts Poe’s thoughts. A filtered, amplified voice that freezes the blood in Poe’s veins and surges a painful, electric-seeming pulse through his chest. For an instant, it seems to stop his heart. 

Poe blanks his thoughts to a careful, white void, and straightens his shoulders before turning to face Kylo Ren. They are in an empty hallway, nearly to the officer’s quarters - his own are past these, nestled into the windowless belly of the ship and just a little further from the hangar. A longer run to evacuation.

Kylo must have followed Poe’s hurried steps all the way here. _Is he suspicious?_

Poe comes to attention, unsure of what else to do. Kylo Ren stalks closer, as if scenting the treachery of Poe’s earlier thoughts. He approaches with all the lithe, cold anger of a great cat. The angle of his mask reveals that the direction of his gaze plays over the chest of Poe’s grimy-feeling flight uniform. Beneath his flight suit, Poe is suddenly aware of the last remains of cum mixed and gone gummy with sweat - now cold. He thinks he is aware of every place on his skin that Terex had put his mouth.

Kylo Ren snarls, and Poe can’t help his flinch, but the cold realization that reflex is unbound from any emotional response helps to steady Poe.

The emotions that should be there - fear, desperation to live, an aversion to pain; these have all become ragged flags, unmoored from their ropes. They no longer respond to the breezes passing through his life the way they should.

“Where are your quarters?” Kylo Ren demands.

It seems nonsensical to Poe. A question with a real answer was not what he expected. “Block Esk. En-cee-oh’s quarters. Number fifteen of twenty.” 

Kylo Ren wheels in that direction, leaving Poe twisting in the breeze of his own confusion. He forces his mind blank, free of speculation, and follows Kylo to his own room.

-

Poe’s door opens at a gesture from Kylo Ren, revealing the flimsy excuse for privacy in the First Order as a cheap ruse. He steps inside _expecting_ Poe to follow him. The weight of these unspoken demands sit like a heavy compulsion and he obeys. The door hisses shut behind him, a sound he’d never previously found intimidating.

When he reaches to activate the light panel, Kylo halts him with a command. “Don’t.”

Poe lets his hand fall.

Kylo turns on his heel and Poe wonders why they’ve come here to stand in the dark. His back aches, a slow pound in time with his pulse, and the sight even of his hard, thin mattress makes him long to get off his feet. He wants it more than he’s afraid of Kylo.

“You were with Agent Terex,” Kylo says. His tone is measured into the voice filter of his mask, and poured out again like it might spill over at any instant.

“Yes,” Poe answers instinctively - it’s so far from what he expects that he’s almost relieved to let the conversation run away on this track. It endangers - so far - only him. It’s _jealousy_ Kylo is restraining. This is not a danger to the Resistance.

Kylo wheels on Poe. “I can practically _smell_ him on you.”

The logic that the one kiss between them had come without terms or circumstances, that Kylo is a distant entity, beyond Poe’s rank or regular reach, won’t lead this to a resolution. Kylo isn’t asking for an explanation of motivation, for a reason or excuse.

The confession stops Kylo where he stands. It’s no dramatic change; he does not erupt in violence or draw the lightsaber Poe knows is at his hip.

That’s a start. Poe has cards to play. His window of opportunity to play them is limited. 

“He gave me something, Poe forges on into the angry silence.

Kylo Ren makes a sudden upward motion with his hands and Poe’s back goes tense, pain crackling up his nerve endings like a jacob’s ladder. Kylo takes off his helmet, reaching up to disengage the jaws of it from his head.

It makes a heavier sound than Poe expects when it hits the sterile grey floor of Poe’s quarters, unharmed by the fall.

“What?” Kylo demands in his own voice. It sounds vulnerable like this, now that Poe’s used to the other version of it. Revealed. 

It takes Poe a minute, looking into Kylo’s dark eyes, facing a fury that’s far older than this instant, to remember how to finish what he started.

He spurs himself into motion. Poe’s done standing. If Kylo is going to kill him for infidelity, he can do it just as easily while Poe lays down. He moves to, through, and past Kylo’s personal space, like a mouse by a cat. He isn’t sure which he feels more like.

“Terex told me to tell you,” Poe begins, testing the waters as he lies down. He has Kylo’s attention anyway, attached to his body as if by string. He lifts his hips, twisting to undo the laces, kicking off his boots.

“He said to tell you that he was going to find Skywalker,” Poe tries to sound casual, like he’s laying a bet on the table at Sabacc. “Just like he’s supposed to.” 

Poe risks a look at Kylo, sees that he’s engaged. He’s watching the way Poe’s body twists toward undress. “He says a man named Tekka knows where Skywalker is.”

Poe doesn’t expect it to be news to Kylo, more he expects some sort of bait communication between Terex and Kylo; a taunt. Instead he sees - with a sudden upset lurch in his gut - that Kylo _hadn’t_ known. At least, some of it.

Kylo turns toward Poe with a new, hungry light in his eyes and sits at the edge of Poe’s bunk, reaching out. His hand hovers over Poe’s thigh, desirous.

“You trust me,” Poe says, reaching to undo the zipper of his flight suit, laying it open from sternum to groin. Poe slips past internal debate and runs on instinct, hoping that the game has entangled Kylo the same way it’s pulled Poe under. 

As he begins to pull it open, Kylo puts his hand over Poe’s, stopping him. 

“Wash it off,” Kylo Ren says.

Instinctively, Poe knows he means the remains of Terex’s touch. He also knows _why_ , and Poe lifts himself heavily from the bunk, letting his jumpsuit hang open and carries his body into the refresher to do Kylo’s bidding.

-

He doesn’t bother to clothe himself before he returns to his quarters, closing the linked door behind him and locking it. Poe’s thoughts had occupied themselves in the refresher, a nervous jigging of unrelated ideas together - what _if_ someone walked in on Kylo Ren half dressed in Poe’s room. Would anyone dare say anything? Would it just become another open and sordid sort of secret like Poe occasionally hears in the officer’s commissary?

For all Kylo’s jealousy, Poe can’t be sure he’d be the only such secret. He resolves not to think about it; it isn’t a relationship. It’s a pleasurable transaction. That thought sends a dark thrill through Poe as he returns to his bed. Kylo Ren is still there, as if he is holding a moment in time by sheer willpower. He’s looking down at Poe’s rumpled, standard issue sheets with enough concentration that Poe wonders if he’s ever seen their like.

His eyes have adjusted to the dim.

“What’s with the droid?” he asks, his tone more human without the mask. He sounds almost like the young man Poe remembers.

“A project,” Poe admits. There’s no sense denying it. Anything else would look like an evasion. “Something to keep my hands busy.”

It sounds filthier than Poe intends, and Kylo looks up at him with sudden, sharp attention, as if just now realizing Poe is naked - hasn’t even bothered with a towel. They’re provided, nonsensically, but the sonic ‘fresher doesn’t even leave him wet.

Poe can’t tell when Kylo’s eyes dilate - it’s too dark, _they’re_ too dark - but he thinks he can see the flare of interest in them anyway. The old, deep desire that echoes what Poe hadn’t recognized all those years ago. Covetousness and heat. Poe approaches and now, Kylo’s eyes don’t leave his body, fixed with intensity.

It surprises Poe when Kylo doesn’t reach for him. He waits, looks expectant - he doesn’t push Poe away, but doesn’t beckon him closer with anything but his clear expectation. Poe stops between his knees. The bed is too low for Kylo’s scarecrow-tall frame. Sitting leaves his knees elevated almost comically to his chest. 

Poe drops down between them, undoing all the work of his heated sonic shower with the impact. It jolts through his body waking up something eager for relief - for contact and reciprocation.

Kylo reaches for him, then, for Poe’s shoulder, to bring him forward. His other hand reaches for the back of his head, as Poe undoes the front of Kylo’s robes, finds his way through the layers of fabric between him and what he’s after. The outer layer is rough under his questing fingers, but they get softer as he reaches skin.

Poe’s glad to find that whatever Ben’s new course of life is, it’s not so extreme as to involve hair underwear. Kylo’s cock is long and slender against Poe’s palm as he draws it free, hardening even as he makes the first contact, stroking the eager, stiffening length of him until Kylo pulls in an off-pattern breath.

The fullness of his erection lays weighty across Poe’s palm, filling it. He shifts on his knees, feeling the pressure of the concrete translating up through his thighs - contrasted by Kylo’s soft grip through his hair, messing it loose from the plastered-flat post refresher mass.

Poe hears Kylo’s intake of breath as he leans in closer; hears him strangle a high-pitched sound when Poe closes his mouth over the head of his cock, steadying the base in the curl of his hand.

He doesn’t know what he expects to have happen - Kylo thrusting up and grabbing his head to hold Poe where he’d choke like a bad pornographic holovid? It doesn’t. Kylo’s touch stays gentle, but insistent when his second hand descends on Poe’s shoulder, he arches up and claws his purchase over the exposed skin as his cock slides over the flat of Poe’s tongue.

That spikes real heat down Poe’s body, the feeling of Kylo’s nails even through his thick leather gloves. he has strong hands - a grip strong enough to bruise, surely. He doesn’t have to pull Poe closer after that, he sinks his mouth down over the full length of Kylo’s cock and works his tongue over the underside of the shaft, feeling the way it makes Kylo Ren human.

He is quiet, and Poe isn’t surprised by this, by how much of himself Kylo restrains. But an upward glance shows Poe the full effect he’s having, written on Kylo’s face. He hasn’t closed his eyes or taken them off Poe, watching his own cock disappearing into Poe’s mouth like it’s a trick he’s never seen before.

After a moment, the gaze is too intense for Poe to endure. He closes his eyes and redoubles his efforts, bobbing his head, steadying himself over Kylo’s angled thighs, aware of the lewd noises of wet motion. The pace of the slide pins his tongue flat, leaving an ache in Poe’s jaw.

Then, finally, with the tip of his tongue lathing attentively over the head of Kylo’s cock, flat along the slit until the salt-bitter taste of thin precum is coating his mouth - Kylo gasps in a breath, making a soft, desperate sound and gripping Poe’s hair tightly, pulling him close, pushing deep.

It’s the only warning Poe gets before Kylo’s cock is pulsing against his tongue, pouring hot-bitter release down his throat, painting the back of his tongue with the taste and sensation. _Now_ the grip on the back of Poe’s neck has gone steely-hard, forcing him forward, the other curled in his hair and pulling.

Poe swallows so he doesn’t drown, letting Kylo ride it out through the quakes and aftershocks, wondering where they go from here. 

Finally, Kylo’s hold on Poe subsides, and Poe catches his breath sitting back on his heels. He has to swallow a few times to clear his mouth. There’s a dangerous cocktail of sensations and emotion gathering in his raw throat. He feels _good_ \- like he’s been punished; like it’s a _just_ punishment and it leaves Poe feeling filthy, despite his clean skin. He’s suited to this; he can embrace the mechanism of it and it feels like the counterbalance to the lies of his compliance to the First Order. An exchange left on the plate for the times his cover requires him to fight in earnest, to _fly_ in earnest. If that is in the service of the Resistance, so too could he swallow this and feel useful.

If Poe’s honest, it’s about the only thing that reaches him here.

“What are you thinking?” Kylo Ren asks, bare voiced and bare faced.

Poe clears his throat; scrubs the last taste of cum off the roof of his mouth with his tongue.

“That I’d like to feel that again,” he says, knowing that his broken honesty will be his best lure.  
-


	7. Chapter 7

This becomes the norm between Poe and Kylo Ren; flames and ice. Poe is not an officer of any great rank and his position on the ship is monitored by his code cylinders and the various comm equipment in his flight suit. He already wanders some to get his communiques out - nothing comes back to him, even when he writes his urgent missive about Skywalker, and the secret weapons facility and the planet made into a weapon. 

The triumphs he had felt over gaining this knowledge flare and fade, return to the ashes of the every day for him, tamped down into grey nothing.

Poe knows better than to push his luck but seeking out Kylo Ren in his quarters. They find other places - dark corners, supply closets. Kylo has the fear of his subordinates and the run of the ship, and such trysts go unremarked amongst the other officers, save as leverage in other matters. Perhaps it’s a little unorthodox, but no one dares question Kylo Ren about it - by extent, it’s also off limits to ask Poe. He’s certain that others know. There must be whispers.

He finds socialization in the Order to be a very careful dance of which subjects it’s okay to discuss in what ways. He also finds he can’t maintain the level of interest required to keep time with this facade for more than a few minutes. _Some spy._

Between hurried sexual exchanges in maintenance closets, Poe’s uniform trousers picking up telltale dust stains at the knees or his gloves getting dark over his bracing palms. Around the frenzied, possessive moments where Kylo grips him by the hips and pries him open with greasy, numbing lube before he slams his cock home - beyond all this, the world recedes from Poe.

His thoughts are ceaseless and loud, but detached from him. Very little of it matters. Poe wonders if his reports ever leave the ship. If he has discovered anything of all that is of value.

He wonder if he was ever _expected_ to, or if Leia put him here to keep him out of the way.

“You’re drifting off,” his gunner warns. Poe realizes, despite the very small rotation of pilots and gunners in Kylo Ren’s escort - that he doesn’t know the man’s name. He doesn’t know either if the gunner is enlisted like Poe, or one of the ‘conscripts’. 

“Adjusting course,” Poe says, pulling the TIE back in line with the _Finalizer’s_ landing beacons. 

“Pay attention,” his gunner barks. Poe doesn’t bother to acknowledge. It’s a nothing-comment in the First Order, a casual cruelty sprouted in place of any proper concern for your fellows.

Poe checks his monitor for the gunner’s tag; at the start of each mission they’re randomly assigned to the TIES like interchangeable parts. Poe knows he’ll see a serial number there - AP-709, an old timer. The conscripts are far less human than the enlisted pilots, mostly relegated to gunnery positions because try as the First Order might, they haven’t found a reliable way to strip the humanity from their pilots and still win in the sky.

709 will file a report on Poe’s inattention, and depending on who he hands it to, it will be filed directly in the trash or it will go to his superior and then into the trash. Poe is under the wing of Kylo Ren, and he has a rubber-stamp record of successful missions that shield him from the moments when his attention wanders.

He thinks Kylo Ren might even be a little pleased with the idea of Poe’s thoughts straying, so long as no harm comes from it. 

Poe lands the TIE, realizing he’s been so caught up in his own thoughts that he’d barely enjoyed the exercise. That’s all it had been, a routine escort patrol to keep his skills sharp.

The TIE fits neatly onto a landing pad and Poe feels some satisfaction that he doesn’t have to let the fighter guide itself. There’s an auto-lander, but space is surprisingly tight in the hangar bay so Poe superstitiously refuses to use it.

His gunner gets out without further comment, leaving Poe to peel himself out of the cockpit slowly. He has a finite amount of time before the racker picks the TIE up off the pad and shelves it neatly along one wall, like putting a toy away.

He takes his time anyway, feeling out his back - it aches a deeper and heavier pain than he’s felt before. Lately all the pins and stabilizing devices compress when he sits too long, and the Order’s not too big on comfort. The seats are molded plasteel fiber - durable, long lasting, easy to remove and re-fit. Easy to clean.

He’s seen the deck crew hose remains out of one of these birds once, and he supposes that’s why the big Star Destroyers are so undecorated inside. If you couldn’t clean it with bleach and a hose, it’s too much trouble to maintain. The hard grate-steel floor rings under Poe’s halting step down and doesn’t do him any favors by being unyielding. 

A fresh wave of aching pain shoots up along his back as he tries to straighten up. It’s so intense as blood returns to the area that Poe has to lean back against the fighter before continuing. He takes two deep breaths, three, and centers himself.

Then, he returns to motion. like the pain is a skin he can shed. It would be just another layer over the top of Poe, leaving him to wonder if he’s a hollow shell or a reptile.

Poe files his mission report, certain that he looks glassy-eyed and exhausted. Then he returns to his quarters and drops himself on his bunk, finding no relief. He considers the report he’d filed on Agent Terex and wonders what the Resistance has done with the fruits of his endeavor; if it is anything at all. He hasn’t heard anything back about it. 

This time, he can’t bring himself to care to give more than a page on his recent activities, dropping his helmet to one side of the desk and leaving it there. What if no one was even out there? If no one reads them?

He carries it to the drop, passing a couple of groups of stormtroopers. A pair on patrol and one off-duty who turns his helmet to watch Poe pass. He realizes he isn’t wearing his own helmet, his face is bare.

He turns away from the loose panel, consumed by a lower inner drive. The urge to fight, to fly until death is imminent. To feel something - _anything_ \- that would make the pain in his back recede from his thoughts.

Ten minutes later he is on the officer’s deck, at Kylo Ren’s door.

-

The first touch impacts like a meteor on Poe’s skin, driving breath out of him, rendering his thoughts into a barren landscape. His heart, for an instant, beats so fast he can’t feel it anymore. it’s no longer a metronome but an urgent, insect buzz in his chest. There’s one blinding instant where he is cognizant that something in his life has gone wrong. Poe shouldn’t _be_ here, there’s some _mistake_ \- but Kylo touches him so gently at first that Poe wants to scream with it. It’s _nothing_ , some void-sensation that won’t ever wash over the low, screaming agony in his back. Too little; too soft.

Too undeserved.

Looking up at Kylo Ren as he settles over Poe, he catches sight of - gets lost in - his deep brown eyes. These are not his father’s eyes, too quick into a defensive smile or to deflect any real connection away. They remind Poe of Leia’s eyes. Softer and deeper - like they could penetrate your very soul.

Kylo seizes Poe’s hips, then, hard enough for Poe to finally feel, flipping him onto his stomach and pushing him into the mattress as if to drown his thoughts. He has a wild strength that gives Poe a little thrill of fear, even as Kylo pulls Poe’s hips up, arching his back and leaving him grabbing for the sheets as Kyo pushes into him. Even well lubricated as Poe is, it’s rough and a little raw and he hisses in a breath as Kylo puts his palm over the scars on either side of his spine; the repair work done in the New Republic, now feeling sore and strained as the arch of his back grows deeper.

Kylo pushes his hips hard against Poe’s, a small, almost instinctive motion; a double check that he has all of Poe, that he’s as deep as he can go. It’s a _full_ feeling, a faintly sore, almost too much sensation inside Poe, as he rocks his hips against the cradle of Kylo’s, shifting and giving small thrusts until it becomes and easy, well-stretched slide.

Kylo works his fingers into Poe’s hair over the back of his neck, grabbing a handful and pulling tight as he begins to piston his hips into Poe, thrusting himself with deep, authoritative motions that fill Poe up. His cock is proportionate to his height, generously sized, and when he withdraws it, it almost seems to empty Poe out again, trying to drag him with it.

Once the built starts, they don’t make any effort to slow it. Kylo pulls Poe’s back into an arching line to get the angle of penetration he wants and then rides against it without pause or mercy or question. Fucking Poe until his focus narrows and expands to some inner monologue of - _in, in, full, full, full - ah!_ and out, _empty_ , air, _more_ , don’t dare _stop_. Relentless and fast until Kylo leans down and drives his hips deep, covering over Poe’s body with his own like claiming territory and fills him with release, his teeth clamped on the back of Poe’s neck like an animal making _sure_ the bonding _stuck_ , that everything was inside Poe, real and certain and taking hold. A seed to grow.

Then it’s over, and Kylo Ren is done with him. Poe loses his erection only slowly as he catches his breath, without the chance for release, but there’s a triumphant ache in his body anyway as Kylo pulls out of him and sits up, leaving him limp on the bed.

The master of the Knights of Ren is stripped to the waist with his hair a vulnerable dishevel, eyes open and dilated in the long aftermath. Refractory. It leaves him almost human.

In the aftermath, Poe’s body feels both lighter and stiffer. He unfolds it over Kylo’s bed - not luxurious, but not the bunk Poe’s been issued either - and waits for the warm glow of recent pleasure at his core to unfold and spread outwards into his limbs. For once, the fist tangled around the nerves in his lower back has opened, and he feels lighter. Suspended. Like how flying used to feel.

Kylo, bare faced, makes use of his ensuite to clean up. Before Poe can get his implied turn at the facilities, the comm beeps a staccato signal, indicating a priority message. Poe goes still, uncertain what to do. Could this be Supreme Leader Snoke? Poe’s not sure he can fool that being even over the holo-comm. 

Kylo settles on the bed, putting his hand low on Poe’s back, over the scars. It is both a casually possessive gesture and a warning to keep silent. Kylo answers his comm with voice only, though an image of Captain Phasma springs to life, standing at stiff attention in miniature and midair.

“Captain Phasma,” Kylo says, by way of acknowledging a successful connection. Though he is not wearing his mask, the comm connection is bad and Poe can hear that the echoes that bounce back are modulated. They match in pitch with Kylo Ren’s voice as the world knows it.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir,” Phasma begins, reflexively. Kylo’s hand strokes over Poe’s surgical scars. Soothing. 

He listens, half aware that this is a vital communication, more aware of the fond contact of Kylo’s absent touch.

Kylo waits for her to continue, offering no assurance that her interruption must be warranted. He will see what it is and then decided.

“Agent Terex is becoming an issue, sir,” Phasma forges on.

Kylo’s hand trails lower still, over the curve of Poe’s ass.

“What kind of issue? Has he found Skywalker?” Even the modulator cannot screen all of the interest from Kylo Ren’s voice.

“He refuses to return and debrief after leaving Megalox quadrant,” Phasma doesn’t show any surprise that Kylo Ren has this information, if she feels any. “He has not transmitted the data he was sent to obtain.”

Kylo is silent, still. His fingers delve into the mess between the cheeks of Poe’s ass, streaking a filthy, slick line up and down in a vaguely teasing manner. He pushes the pads of his first two fingers over the stretched boundaries of Poe’s hole.

“His ship took heavy damage,” Phasma continues, treading carefully with her next few statements. “He engaged the Resistance in a direct firefight against orders, and our initial reports suggest he also destroyed the prison security station and many of its escape pods.”

Kylo considers this, his fingers dragging entry into Poe, hooking down toward his prostate. Poe holds his breath, turns his face into the stiff pillow and closes his eyes as Kylo teases him, but he doesn’t stop listening.

“Is he not supposed to be an _Agent_ , Captain?” Kylo puts particular stress on the word. “It’s a title that implies discretion.”

Phasma takes the wise course, neither attempting to argue or explain in Terex’s favor. “We hired him originally for his contacts. So far, these have kept him one step ahead of the Resistance agents who appear to be after the same information.”

“A wildly shooting blaster will hit a target,” Kylo says, curling his fingers against Poe’s prostate again, as if miming pulling a trigger. “But it’s more useful to have a weapon you can _aim_. Find his contacts, Phasma. Make them _our_ contacts.”

“Yes, sir,” Phasma’s hologram stands straighter as she accepts the order.

“And bring Terex back in line,” Kylo adds, pushing his fingers deeper into Poe so he has to bite back a gasp. “His example will be a lesson to others in the employ of the First Order. Make it a message that encourages loyalty.”

“Yes,sir,” Phasma repeats, before her image flickers out. 

Kylo presses the pads of his fingers against Poe’s prostate until he can’t help but sob out a quiet gasp, shifting his hips up. His cock is hard again, untouched, and the previous failure to release makes his balls feel heavy and swollen, his whole body aching and eager for the release Kylo can give him.

“And _you_ , Captain,” Kylo purrs, working a small circle over his target that leaves Poe’s body shaking and desperate, skirting along the electric-hot line of stimulation. “When next your path crosses with Agent Terex, you bring me what he knows.”

Poe’s orgasm is hot-and-cold, a sharp and sudden thing riding as much on a tame fear of his discovery as it is actual pleasure. He stuffs a starchy corner of Kylo’s pillow into his mouth and cums all over his sheets.

As Poe catches his breath, Kylo withdraws his fingers, wiping them clean absently over the skin on the backs of Poe’s thighs.

“Get out,” Kylo says - but Poe knows that tone. It’s resignation to this - to the allowance of exactly this much contact and intimacy, but no more.

Poe picks up his clothes with an ache in his back and his soul, but it’s a wound that tells him he’s alive. 

-


	8. Chapter 8

For a time after this, Kylo Ren leaves the ship. Poe doesn’t know where to, or for what purpose. It’s not his place to ask, and while the First Order has its share of idle gossip, Kylo Ren is a subject that goes undiscussed. Especially, Poe guesses, in front of a member of his escort.

In that way, it’s still military. For whatever reason, he and the rest of the escort - sans the pilot drawn for the Upsilon - remain untapped aboard the _Finalizer._ Poe begins to accept that he’ll be mostly uninformed as a way of life in the First Order.

He feels no particular _desire_ to know, either. It’s information he might give to the Resistance, but he supposes that’s why no one has it.

“I’m going stir crazy,” he tells 26, finally picking up the motivator to resume work. “Most people around here would probably kill for paid time off.”

Such ‘pay’ as it is. Poe doubts, even if he never spends an extra penny of his commission salary, that he can afford to retire any time soon. He has a roof over his head, equipment to operate, and a purpose - for now, it’s enough.

For a time, he works in silence. The work no longer gives him any satisfaction; he doesn’t exactly look forward to a successful outcome. 

“Well,” he says, scrubbing grime and char off the circuits he wants to re-solder. “I started the job. Finishing it is something to do.”

26 doesn’t answer. Poe works until the lights turn off, and then again the next day, only coming out of the trance when he realizes he can hear his shared refresher going and realizes it’s the first time he’s ever been aware of his neighbor. He also hasn’t taken a refresher himself in a few days.

He slides the repaired motivator back into place and debates actually turning the droid on. Finally, he lifts himself from his chair and regrets it, a rude noise growls out of Poe’s chest - his back is stiff and uncooperative, awake with a dull pain that flares up as he stands.

He abandons the motivator and grips his back, thinking about Kylo’s earlier words - ‘ _this can be repaired_ ’. He wonders if it would stop the dull ache in his every waking moment. Then again, he has no idea what that really means. Cybernetic?

_Just the sweet mercy of death?_

Poe shakes off the intrusive thought and stretches himself the way he’d been taught in his physical therapy until the tight coils of pain unwind slightly.

Then he gives up and gets back into bed, lying flat until he can sleep.

-

The next time Poe sees Terex, he has no opportunity to do as Kylo asked. An unfamiliar officer is leading him through the hangar bay in binders, and he’s wearing the ragged multicolored remains of cobbled together armor. There’s bruising on his face. Poe’s heard enough chatter around the officer’s mess and hangar to know about his fall from grace.

Poe’s surprised they’ve brought him back alive. He hadn’t deserted in so many words, but to refuse orders, to attempt to take his own initiative - these were near to treason. Poe wouldn’t have been surprised even if they’d paraded Terex’s head through the ship on a spike as a warning. 

What must save Agent Terex is that he has his hands on the reins of any number of men like Poe. It’s this information network which means he’ll be ushered into the dark hell of the Finalizer’s detainment block and questioned; perhaps even offered redemption through re-education, rather than immediately executed.

Poe doesn’t ask himself which is the worse fate. He doubts his own would cause even this much debate. Kylo would cut him down with his ragged-humming blade, and step over his body. He knows enough of what the meetings with Supreme Leader Snoke - the big voice in the conference room, he’s certain of it - do to Kylo to know that much.

He doesn’t know if Kylo Ren ever wavers at his core, but Poe wouldn’t put money on it.

When he returns to his quarters for the evening, he wonders where it is Kylo has gone to. He constructs a thin report about Terex’s removal from power, though this is something he is certain that the Resistance must already know. The shuttle pilots had complained about a wasted opportunity.

“I know we had to take out Terex’s ugly old junkpile,” one had complained, through his helmet. “But I bet we could have hit those damn Resistance fighters too and said they went up with the Carrion Spike. Nothing to do for it.”

He had pantomimed a big explosion.

“Those damn cowards have New Republic paint schemes on those old junkers,” his co-pilot said. “It’s like Captain Malarus says. All it takes is one grainy footage feed getting out and the Republic’s up our porthole.”

“Why all this if not to fight?” 

“Write a petition to the supreme leader. It’s _his_ order that we stay non-combative.”

Then their XO had returned, free of her burden. Terex was safely tucked away in a cell somewhere and the pilots had returned to the same sort of stoic non beings that Poe knows he becomes when officers are nearby. 

What _is_ Snoke waiting for? 

If Poe knew, it would make a better report than all this filler. His body feels heavy when he stands, and he hits his knees on the underside of his desk, rattling something. When he’s done nursing his bruise, he discovers that it’s 26‘s discarded motivator unit.

He picks it up, looking at it like something he doesn’t recognize. An unfinished job. In the corner, 26 languishes dark and extinguished.

“Guess you’d like this back,” Poe says. 

26 offers no opinion. Poe thinks briefly of BB-8, of watching the New Republic X-Wing streak away in flames, and smoke through the panic-pain-tears as his world spun out under him like a top.

It takes fifteen seconds of freefall for the seat to drop away after ejection at 50,000 feet. Nearly four minutes more for a pilot to drop below the nearly-airless edge of space and the chute to open. Poe remembers all of this time vividly.

He shrugs the memory off like the straps of a safety harness and goes to make his drop. The corridors seem empty. For a ship with so many thousands of people on it, he finds they are almost always contained where they’re supposed to be.

As he fits the loose panel back into place, a lone stormtrooper rounds the corner and Poe startles - no one had been behind him, he is sure of it! The panel slips in his hands, missing it’s connection points and rattling against the other panels before he can stop it’s slide. Poe’s heart goes still.

The stormtrooper also stops, both of them frozen in place, uncertain. Poe’s sure _he’s_ unexpected, too. A helmetless pilot struggling with a panel of decking. His report is behind it.

A half-dozen excuses try to construct themselves in his mind. _It was loose, so I thought I’d just - you know how long it takes maintenance to - I saw someone fiddling with-_

Poe manages, “I-”

“Captain,” the trooper cuts him off.

They both hesitate. Poe’s life is trying to flash in front of his eyes, but all his mind drags up is how his own hands look when Kylo fucks him from behind. _Great, thanks mind, I_ am _fucked, you got that one right-_

“I have something for you,” the trooper says. He reaches up for his helmet, starting to work the catches. 

“What?” Poe’s sure that’s not right. He’s heard wrong, or the trooper is confused. The heavy panel slips in his hands again, pulling his attention away.

Armored hands join his own the panel, helping him lift it back into place.

“I, uh, I have a report to give you,” the trooper says. His voice sounds clearer.

Poe looks up, finding himself shoulder-to-shoulder with an unmasked stormtrooper. He has dark, serious brown eyes and short-cropped raincloud curls. Warm, alive, brown skin. Poe is startled by his _humanity_.

“What?” he repeats himself stupidly.

The trooper steps back, reaching into a pouch at his belt, his other gloved hand displayed palm-out in a show of non-violence. When he’s sure he has Poe’s attention, he offers a wink.

Poe feels it like a sucker-punch to his gut - not just because the man is handsome (in a warm, human, light way that’s everything the First Order is not), but with realization. _My contact._

He’d almost forgotten he isn’t alone. The trooper produces a small data storage device, like the one he’d just deposited behind that damned tricky panel.

“It’s,” he starts, then looks apologetically at Poe, thrusting it toward him. “It’s bad news. I’m sorry.” 

Poe takes the offered device with a numb, automatic gesture. The conditioned, First Order response to obey.

For a moment, the both look at each other. They have seen each other before, more times than they can possibly ever know. Distantly, Poe realizes he’s gone half-hard in his uniform; that it might be a physical response that’s the only part of fear left in him. 

“Thank you,” he manages. “I, uh...”

He gestures toward the panel. His contact’s eyes light with understanding, and his face is so easy to read, Poe knows he shouldn’t finish the sentence. _Don’t worry_ , the trooper’s face says, with compassionate eyes. _I’ll get it. Later._

He turns then, leaving Poe standing dumbly in the hall, holding his only lifeline from the outside. He picks up his helmet, fastens it back on, and his posture and attitude transform. He becomes a _Stormtrooper_ again. Another one of thousands, and continues on his way.

-

His contact is right, it is bad news. Poe reads the short, terse report and feels tears in his eyes before the news fully penetrates to his frozen core. 

“Kriff,” he tells the silent room. “L’ulo. _Kriff._ ”

It hardly feels like enough. Like he’s trying to coax the dead roots of grief to show something green and alive. L’ulo had been a near constant figure in his life; his mother’s co-pilot, at times a compass for both him and his father, after she had gone. Poe remembers his laugh and his loyalty the most.

Now he’s gone. Poe wants to break something. To break _everything_ in the damned First Order. His hard desk chair has too much gravity for him to leave it. Poe breathes in anger and then exhales it slowly. He had given the Resistance everything he knew about Agent Terex. It might even have been his information that put L’ulo in his path.

Poe shoves that thought aside - war means casualties and grief. The sparse details in the report suggest L’ulo had given his life to protect others, and the enemy had paid for it.

Poe wipes his face. The void inside him grows some, and he lets it consume his grief. It’s easier that way. He deletes the contents of the data device and scrambles the empty drive before dropping it into a garbage chute.

Then he picks up 26‘s motivator and begins the time consuming process of re-installing it. It devours all of Poe’s thoughts, until he’s completed the tack-welds required to hold it absolutely steady. 26 will never quite be the same without a whole new motivator, but Poe can at least get the droid operational again.

If everything just stays steady...

He boots the droid, watching power reach all his repairs, looking at the diagnostic panel display a series of test patterns as they sense the time discrepancy from the last activation.

“There you go,” Poe says, sitting back. He wonders what the droid remembers - if it will want to try and report back to the quartermaster.

“Wouldn’t that be a surprise,” Poe mutters, stretching his back. “A ghost, back from-”

It’s not the right thing to say, even to himself.

He remembers the way, when all the old Rebels got together on the lawn of his father’s ranch, that twilight always changed the mood. Fond memories would transform in the cover of darkness to grief and salutations. It was like once the light was gone, the shine went out of war and death, even ten years past.

Poe remembers, in his fourteenth year, retreating from all of this. Upstairs in his room, blasting music into his ears while BB-8 hummed curiosity at his agitation. Vaguely, a half memory, he recalls that Ben Solo had sat at Leia’s side all night, absorbing all the melancholy just to be next to her for the first time since he’d been surrendered to Luke’s care.

He knows how that unfolded now. Wonders if Ben would rather have lay on his floor and listened to records, too.

It was L’ulo who had found him, intruding on Poe’s hideaway as the night turned full dark.

“Ah, I’m alright,” Poe had assured him, putting on a brave smile. “It’s rough for everybody, right?”

L’ulo saw through it. “I brought you some wine. Don’t tell your father.”

Poe had never been encouraged to break a rule by an adult before. It felt a little thrilling and naughty. L’ulo passed the bottle over, then hesitated.

“If you start to feel dizzy, stop,” he’d said. “After that point it’s not fun enough for the price you pay afterward.”

Now, in the eternal grieving dark of space, Poe thinks it is the best life advice he’s ever gotten. If only he’d listened to it.

His comm lights up suddenly, a new duty roster hitting his system. Kylo Ren must be back.

Poe makes it to Kylo’s quarters before he himself does, and waits.


	9. Chapter 9

Kylo warms him up with nothing but his well lubricated cock, pushing in against a momentarily unyielding pressure before Poe’s body yields to the stretch and pinch of his sudden girth. It’s shy of agony but _tight_ enough to drive the breath out of Poe as the thrusts transform from short and stinging, desperate to fit, to the long, easy piston slide that drives the memory of the initial ache out of Poe’s body. He almost misses the punishment of it, when it’s gone.

It’s raw and real and penetrating, cutting through the haze of everything else. It finds the quick of Poe, the center, opening it up like a rare bloom. When everything else requires him to keep it closed and secret and protected. A fist closed so tight for so long it aches.

Now, as Kylo pounds hard into him; hands clawing on Poe’s hips and thumbs pressing into the parallel scars on his back, he can feel it curling loosely closed again. He grabs at the blankets, arching himself up and - there! _Right_ there, Kylo’s cock sliding and filling against his prostate, striking up brilliant sparks behind Poe’s eyelids and coiling up the imminent burst of orgasm into a tight knot in Poe’s belly.

He hasn’t been forbidden from putting his hands on himself to help him get over, but - he likes it better - knows it has some effect on Kylo if he cums just from being fucked. Tonight, he thinks he can. He’s so close now, suddenly on the precipice, and he thinks he can almost _sense_ that Kylo is carding a touch through Poe’s thoughts like he often does through Poe’s hair before pulling it.

Using the Force, Kylo grabs hold of something inside of Poe - something under his conscious thoughts. Kylo seizes hold of the reins of biological process and _wrenches_ Poe over the edge, plunging him down into sudden and sharp orgasm. 

“Ah-ah!” Poe feels the sound yank out of him, breathless and small, but heartfelt, stuttering with the breaking rhythm of Kylo’s thrusts. Poe gasps in another breath and tries to hold his voice, but he’s still cumming - he can feel the wet spot spreading and pooling under his knees, but Kylo’s force-hold on his impulses hangs on. Wringing more out of Poe than he thought possible.

Before he can cry out, Kylo reaches up under Poe, wrapping his arm over Poe’s chest like a serpent, and plunges two fingers into Poe’s mouth to muffle his cry, slicking the taste of thick leather over Poe’s tongue, pushing against his throat until Poe swallows the sound, swallows again and again against Kylo’s fingertips until Kylo’s done. Satisfied.

Poe registers Kylo Ren’s teeth sinking into the back of his neck, marking him.

Then, he withdraws his fingers and softening cock both. Poe gasps for breath, feeling the motion heave through him desperately, like an empty ache echoing around within him, filling the volume until he breathes it out like smoke.

His body collapses against the bed, scratchy sheets sticking to his belly and thighs with his own emissions. A deep tremble of exertion runs through Poe, running outward from his injured spine. It promises to scream pain in the morning, to lock up tight in all the damaged muscles, but Poe doesn’t care. His mind is clear and empty and his path forward is dark, but evident.

-

In the aftermath, Poe feels restored. He no longer has to care about what he’s lost. He can catch his breath only just in time for activity to pick up again. Part of him knows that the quiet of his emotions is costing him something. Consuming a debt of some other resource inside him that he will eventually come to miss.

For now, he’s grateful he can keep his nose to the grindstone.

“They’re planning something, twenty-six, I know it,” Poe tells the droid. 26 is aware now, cognizant but not fully restored or mobile yet.

“My services will be needed,” 26 says, in toneless binary. “Please complete repairs.”

“Hate to tell you this, for at least the tenth time, but you were fired,” Poe reminds. 26 doesn’t catch on very fast. Not a lot of personality. The First Order doesn’t seem to like even for persons to have a personality.

“I am equipment, I cannot be fired,” 26 says.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, buddy.” Poe’s pretty sure the droid blames him for it’s current state. He doesn’t waste breath arguing the point. 26, as of yet, can’t work its manipulator arms or the tripod collection of rollers it has to locomote with. Poe’s been hoping that by saving these for last, he can keep 26 from rolling right back to the trash heap.

“It’s just something in the atmosphere,” Poe continues his earlier track. “Since Kylo Ren got back, everything’s been moving, all the little parts of this big machine have new orders.”

26 swings its optical sensors toward Poe and the gaze feels distinctly accusatory.

“Don’t worry, the Quartermaster isn’t missing you,” Poe mutters.

“My duties-” 26 starts.

Poe sighs and puts down his tools, checking the time. He has duty himself in two hours, even Kylo’s escort have all been tapped to keep them sharp. He decides he’s finished with 26 for now, and gives the droid a reassuring pat in spite of its clinical protest as Poe leaves it behind. He retrieves his helmet and service blaster from the secure locker - strict orders have been issued about carrying them at all times.

Another sign of activity in the hive, Poe supposes. He checks the charge on his blaster, puts on his helmet, and leaves wearing both.

He wants to walk a little, to get out of his room and move. Also, he wants to check the fighter he’s been assigned today anyway. All this extra work everyone’s been doing leaves him feeling anxious about the quality of the work declining. It’s the sort of paranoia he thinks he’ll feel in his spine until he stops flying.

_Forever, probably._

His steps carry him past the conference chamber, and he can hear - distantly - the booming tones of Supreme Leader Snoke. Beyond this, the hangar is abuzz with activity, troops drilling in formation or technicians moving from ship to ship as fighters and troop transports vie for space on the landing pads.

All signs of life showing. This, combined with the efforts of the _Finalizer’s_ engines carrying them through hyperspace tell Poe much.

The dock master looks at Poe’s duty display, then at his own screen, and grunts.

“That TIE is out,” he reports. “It will return on the quarter hour before your shift.”

“You’re flying them hot,” Poe says, trying not to sound like he’s registering a complaint.

“All hands on deck today, and one of our S.F. designated ships is flagged with acceleration troubles, so it’s off rotations until we have a free technician.”

The officer taps a few more keys and then looks up, adding drily, “Seems a ‘Captain Dameron registered a technical issue. That seems to be you. So, you only have yourself to thank. Anything flagged by you escort guys requires a full diagnostic work-up.”

Poe’s glad to know his reports will be taken seriously, on the one hand. On the other, a quarter hour will not be enough to satisfy him of the reliability of his assigned fighter.

“Alright,” Poe says. No point arguing it - all his dislike will not return the TIE to the hangar any faster, or make things go his way. There are no special considerations of that nature in the First Order. Not at his rank - he is useful, but not yet useful enough to have allowances made.

“It’ll come in on pad 14 if you’d like to wait,” the deck officers says, in a tone that suggests it makes his day to mildly inconvenience pilots.

Probably it does.

Poe decides that rather than spending in excess of an hour trying to stay out of the way in the busy hangar bay, he’ll go to the commissary and have a caf. As he turns his eye catches on a familiar figure, moving stiff and straight legged in a perfect drill-march through the hangar.

_Terex? Is he in uniform?_

Poe recognizes the face - but the uniform is the rank-and-file gray of the lowest levels of command, stripped of all insignia of rank or sign of service.

Poe has to look a moment to see the implant spread over his temple; the dead and servile look in his eyes.

It shocks hims even though he knows it shouldn’t. Poe had never really _liked_ the man, not in any true sense of the word. But Terex had been an individual, the sign that maybe the First Order had learned from the mistakes the Empire had made. Poe had expected that his treason would be cause for execution.

This way, he is still of use. They still have what he has built. It’s terrifying and sickening and Poe feels his guts twist in the first real fear he’s felt in a long time. 

There was always, before, the chance that he might die for his service to the Resistance - for his betrayal of the First Order. The idea that they might hollow him out instead, make him pay penance by truly, unquestioningly serving, is one that penetrates his haze.

Poe’s stomach roils as he considers it. Then, in the back of his mind, a small voice. _What difference would it make?_

His body is already in use by the First Order - not only does Poe fly for them, protecting Kylo Ren at times from his own allies, or shooting Resistance ships out of the sky. Hell, he could have killed L’ulo if Terex’s men hadn’t done it - but he goes willingly to Kylo Ren’s quarters. Onto his knees, when he’s asked. What does it truly matter that he carries a Resistance heart inside? He’s filed a few reports, but is the cost worth the purchases?

Perhaps with reconditioning that extreme, all that would change was that Poe would no longer feel guilty about his servitude. Poe tears his eyes away from the ruins of Agent Terex, wishing he could return to the bar on the rim where Leia found him and pour alcohol on his thoughts until they drowned.

-

He avoids Kylo Ren for a week after that, trying to get his head straight - trying to get to the bottom of what all this increased activity means. It comes to his awareness that the First Order is an establishment that keeps its secrets to itself. Rank and file know nothing; they have been told to jump and they’re hopping everywhere.

Even the officers are all sounding each other out as to their ultimate destination. Playing a delicate and pretentious game of coup - finding out what others know. Poe spends enough time in the officer’s mess drinking endless cups of terrible caf rations, or (as a direct result of so much caf) standing in the deck latrine and emptying his taxed bladder - to realize that all players of this game know either nothing, or only their orders out of context. Miniscule puzzle pieces that Poe can’t find the edges or theme of.

Poe witnesses a conversation between General Hux and Kylo Ren by accident. Frustration has led him to follow Kylo - not strictly for this purpose. It feels a little more like proper spy work to seize the opportunity. 

“You’re sure the information is viable?” Hux’s voice is accusatory, a cruel snarl he hurls at Kylo Ren in challenge. Poe flinches back around the corner, pressing himself flat and hoping to avoid the imminent fallout.

“It has proven good, to this point,” Kylo says, smugly. “Or can’t you stand to see your own methods bear fruit?”

Poe presses his back against the wall and listens, trying to keep his thoughts still.

“A few captured smugglers,” Hux snarls. “The New Republic is still feeding the Resistance from their open hands and we have _yet_ to be able to prove their lies-”

“But the information is good,” Kylo says, finding the pause in the General’s tirade and filling it. “We are proceeding on Jakku on that information. You have assured me that your men are ready-”

While they continue to posture at each other, Poe’s thoughts race. _Jakku?_ he wonders, _is anything even still there?_ If anything is left after the battle that finally put an end to the Empire all those years ago, it can’t be anything good. Neither of Poe’s parents had taken part in the battle of Jakku, but he’s heard Nora Wexley speak about it, sometimes. Never with fondness.

“Your _quest_ -” Hux spits. Poe yanks his attention back to the here and now.

Kylo Ren cuts him off, tone sharp, hanging on the edge of violence. “The Supreme Leader does not want this information to fall into the wrong hands.”

Hux goes quiet, but Poe doubts he likes to be interrupted or spoken to as if from a superior position of rank. The stories that ripple through the First Order tell Poe two monsters stand in that corridor. Hux is an old boy of the Order; raised to its doctrine. No wonder they don’t get along. They’re extremes on the ends of the scale; the lifer vs. the recruit.

“We’ve tracked the map to Lor San Tekka, and him to Jakku,” Kylo says, finally. “Both will soon be in my hands. Do not get in my way.”

Kylo leaves the hallway full of his anger and Hux’s, a tense roiling cloud that sends Poe scurrying for cover like a rabbit going to ground.

All this activity suddenly has a direction in Poe’s mind. They must be planning a major military action on Jakku. Or - Poe sighs, returning to his quarters - they expect their actions there will draw retaliation. Why would it worry them at all? He’s sure they aren’t afraid. They want to make a demonstration. 

They’re ready to move out of the shadows and onto the Galactic stage. _Speak softly, and carry a big blaster._

But he knows, out of the whole _Finalizer_ , where they’re going. Why. Lor San Tekka and Luke Skywalker and a map. It sounds too crazy to be real - but then again, Poe’s become very familiar with how often things that shouldn’t be real, are.

Like the rebirth of the Empire.

Poe hurries to his quarters, knowing he has to get this out to the Resistance as soon as possible.

“Sir,” 26 greets, as Poe enters. “All droids have been ordered to report to their stations. If you could restore function to my movement servos...”

“You’re still hooked up to the ship’s messaging system?” Poe asked, bewildered.

“First priority after systems failure is re-establishing communications.”

“Well, turn it off,” Poe orders, suddenly alight with nerves. What has he said to or around 26 that might have given him away? It could be making its way to command or internal security right now.

“You don’t have the authority to-” 26 begins. Poe reaches out and turns the droid off completely, taking a deep breath.

His heart is hammering, but he pulls the mantle of uncaring his ordeal has given him over his body. It won’t be like Terex.

Poe sits down to write his report, going as fast as he dares.


	10. Chapter 10

“We’re ready to descend,” Kylo says in Poe’s ear, leaning briefly over the back of the pilot’s chair. “The forward troops will have secured the area by now.”

Poe obeys, feeling the bottom drop out of his gut as he lifts the Upsilon command shuttle off the platform to follow the advance wave down to Jakku’s surface. He feels anxious, uncomfortable to be in the shuttle rather than a TIE fighter. 

The interior of the shuttle is full of eager anticipation - to Poe it feels choking, stifling - from the small company of Stormtroopers waiting at the back of the ship. Poe hopes his warning made it to the Resistance in time. He doesn’t know what they’ll find down there, but the First Order seems eager to blood themselves and he hopes the Resistance has already found what they were seeking and left.

The village comes into his field of view as a small, bright spot through his view screen. It is awash with Stormtroopers, alight with fire in many places. Poe feels like a carrion bird landing on a barely cooled corpse as he places the shuttle down on the outskirts of the village, his spotlight illuminating the bare patch of sand below. He keeps his attention there instead of the chaos and agony outside of it.

When the hatch opens to unleash the small group within the shuttle, the sound of screaming and blaster fire from outside is deafening.

As Kylo Ren steps off the ship, all goes quiet. 

Poe’s hands ache on the yoke, stiff with the tension of his grip. He has to close his eyes and focus on trying to stay calm. The fighting is over. The scents of burning straw and hot sand and blood and fear all reach Poe, even under his helmet. Only the smoke is filtered out, to keep his lungs from seizing.

There are a few moments of quiet while Poe counts his racing heartbeats. The sound of Kylo’s lightsaber activating, a snarl of energy and the unstable, unmistakable hum of it as it cuts the air - then muffles itself on something, a void of only a couple seconds. Poe keeps his eyes closed and looks - _listens_ \- for any sign of the Resistance. He prays that they’ve made it; come and gone already. A brief skirmish - blaster fire, followed by Kylo giving orders, the air almost flexing with power - dashes his hopes.

He’s sure things are over, that the First Order has won and Kylo must have what he came for, when Phasma’s orders to terminate all of the prisoners come to him over the official channel and his body goes cold. Poe’s thoughts numb, fixating on the truest expression of _no_ , dragging him out of his seat and getting his blaster into his hand. He makes it to the door in time to see them loading someone onto the troop transport, the last bodies falling lifeless in the center of the vanishing town.

Poe sags against a strut, feeling like the debris trail smearing out of a starship tearing itself up on the atmosphere. Helplessness and despair penetrate him, almost blinding him to Kylo’s approach.

Kylo’s glove on his shoulder jumps Poe out of his thoughts, startling him so hard his teeth click together. “Leave that to the stormtroopers. You serve the Order differently.” 

He has mistaken Poe’s intent to stop the massacre for a desire to join it. For a moment of blind panic, Poe seems to feel the way Kylo is reaching out for his thoughts - maybe to reassure or maybe he already senses some hesitation or rejection of the scene of extreme suffering in front of him.

Then Kylo turns suddenly and sharply away. Back toward the ring of troopers holding ready for anything to move - for any survivors to emerge from their burning homes or hiding. His hidden gaze singles out one lone trooper with a sagging gun and a bloody smear palmed over the stark white helmet.

Kylo’s attention lingers like a rifle sight on this individual, and the trooper’s helmet slowly swings back toward him. In that instant, Poe both knows - somehow - that his contact is under that mask. The dark-eyed stranger who has been his only true ally on the _Finalizer_ all this time. He’s also sure that Kylo is considering killing him; teetering on the line before violence. The lightsaber is still gripped in his other hand, and the meaty-copper smell of death is all around them. 

Poe turns suddenly to break the spell, jerking away from the hand on his shoulder and heading back for the pilot’s seat, drawing Kylo’s danger into the sealed shuttle with him. Kylo follows after only a moment’s pause.

-

Blaster fire still seems to be ringing in Poe’s ears as he lands the shuttle on the _Finalizer_ , his whole body feeling numb and shocky with fear. He can see them ushering a pilot - he’d seen the remains of the X-Wing, he’s _sure_ \- in civilian clothes, frog marching him off for interrogation.

With a start, he realizes it’s Nora’s son - Temmin Wexley. Returning to Jakku for perhaps the first time since the battle he used to speak about with such malice. Poe feels a cold, stark worry.

He lifts himself out of his chair without thinking about it. As he goes to leave the shuttle, he finds it's already empty of other bodies. Kylo will want to oversee the interrogation personally. Half a plan, crazy and unformed, scrambles to life in Poe’s thoughts.

If he can get Snap out, into a ship - maybe with the help of his contact-

Acting on a wild hunch, Poe follows the trooper with the bloodied helmet. He’s the last one off the transport, and he immediately turns around to return to the dark, isolated space within.

_Is he sending a message now?_ Poe wonders. It seems like a big risk, but the Resistance will need to know as soon as possible, if the First Order has the map.

When Poe enters the transport’s open bay, he sees that the stormtrooper - the Resistance operative, he reminds himself - has pulled his helmet off, clutching it forgotten at his side and gasping for air.

For the first time in a long time, Poe’s heart opens up enough to allow a twinge - more like an eager heave - of sympathy. Poe approaches carefully.

“Are you-” he makes it through, before the man wheels around, white-eyed and fearful. Poe shows his hands in a gesture of peace, rerouting his sentence.

“It’s me,” Poe says, watching the way the man’s teeth flash as he pants, expression of fear softening some. On instinct - because the air in his own helmet tastes suddenly stale, Poe pulls off his helmet as if to prove his words. “Are you okay?”

“It was,” the other man starts. “They-”

“I know,” Poe says, understanding.

“I didn’t shoot,” he continues. It looks like it’s important to him that someone _knows_ that.

“I know,” Poe repeats, but the news fills him with dismay. _He’s a better, braver man than I am._

Poe shakes off that sinking, hopeless feeling. “If I know, they know too. You gotta get out of here.”

Poe hesitates, then he reaches out, offering his open, gloved hand.

“Okay,” the man gasps, reaching out. His white-and-black gauntlet closes over Poe’s hand, strong but shaking. Poe finds he isn’t afraid at all and wonders if it's bravery or heartlessness. He wonders if it matters.

“What’s your name?” Poe asks, trying to chase way the last of the panic. It’s not over yet, not safe to lose control.

“Finn,” he says.

“Finn,” Poe repeats. “I like that.”

Finn nods, swallowing, his hand squeezing Poe’s.

“Finn, you gotta get out of here,” Poe repeats. “If they figure out you didn’t fire, it’ll be reconditioning or worse if they-”

He stops himself, shakes his head.

Finn nods.

“And we gotta get the other pilot out of here,” Poe says. “If you both go together, you can take a TIE, make a break for it. Get to light speed and get out of here.

“Okay,” Finn says, following Poe’s plan. He lifts his helmet to put it back on, then hesitates. “What about you?”

“What?”

“What about you,” Finn insists. “A TIE only seats one or two. How do you get out?”

Poe almost balks at the idea. Even after all this, he’s never expected extraction. Only to survive as long as he could. To go undiscovered as long as possible.

“I can’t,” he says. “I-”

“Poe,” Finn protests.

“I’m right at Kylo Ren’s side,” Poe starts, but it’s a weak excuse to cover his fear. Here, he can use his weakness for some good. They let him fly. “I can get-”

“If they figure out you helped me out of here, you’ll get nothing,” Finn says, reaching out for Poe’s hand again. He seems to screw up his courage to continue. “It’s killing you here. I’ve seen it happening.”

_What am I to the Resistance, if I’m not here?_ Poe laments to himself.

“Poe,” Finn repeats, low and earnest, his grip on Poe’s hand the most real thing Poe’s felt in years; like a lifeline out of the darkness. “Come with me.”

-

“We have to go to-” Poe doesn’t quite know how to explain 26. “There’s a droid in my quarters.”

“That one you pulled off the junk pile?” Finn sounds disbelieving. “Leave, it Poe. Even if you did get it working again, it’s First Order garbage.”

“I repaired it,” Poe affirms, turning stubbornly for the hall that leads to the officer’s quarters.

“Speak of a gundark,” Finn mutters suddenly.

Up the hall, 26 is rolling toward the other end, trundling toward the service corridors that will take it back to the Quartermaster.

“Must have finished its own repairs,” Poe says, surprised.

“Where’s it going?” Finn demands.

“Twenty-six!” Poe shouts, trying to catch the droid’s attention.

It hesitates at the doorway, swinging its optical lense toward Poe.

“Come here,” Poe says, trying to sound kind and authoritative at the same time. He hopes against hope that the droid will see some kind of reason. That some spark of intelligence will recognize Poe’s kindnesses as what they are. 

There is one moment of hesitation only. Then, 26 disappears through the door and Poe swears. Finn catches his hand before he can go after the droid. 

“He made his choice,” Finn says. “We have to go.”

Poe spends the frantic scramble through the ship's interior second and third guessing himself. What was he thinking, trying to escape?

“Okay,” Finn was muttering to himself, still evincing all the signs of shocky recovery after his ordeal planetside. “Stay calm, stay calm.”

Poe feels almost serenely calm. He’s fairly certain some part of this will end in his death. This isn’t the part that concerns him. He’s seen the well of darkness inside Kylo Ren, that the depths are deep and still and dangerously untroubled until they roil up to boiling between instants. 

But he was Leia’s boy, and there’s a kinship in the darkness they both carry, in passing moments when they drift together.

“Okay,” Finn repeats, putting on his best face - his helmet is recently cleaned, scoured of the bloody finger-print smears that had once set it apart. “I’ll go in and - Poe, are you still with me?”

Poe realizes he hasn’t been. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Poe,” Finn says, sounding suddenly full of the conviction and steadiness that he’d lacked before. “You’ve done your job. More than was asked. With your help we’ve led several successful missions that the First Order doesn’t want anyone to know about. I know you don’t think it’s enough-”

“Finn,” Poe interrupts, before this gets any further. _There have been missions? Successful ones?_ The information doesn’t seem to want to penetrate, seeming almost nonsensical instead. “That’s not what I meant.”

Finn hesitates, trying to add things up - to make sense of Poe’s reluctance. “Then...what?”

“I think,” Poe starts, but it doesn’t seem like enough. “Listen. I know who Kylo Ren is. We knew each other before all this. Maybe I can use this massacre to talk some sense into him. To get him to come with us, or-”

Finn grabs Poe by the shoulders, locking visors with him. Poe can almost feel the intensity of Finn’s gaze through the duraplast layers separating them.

“Poe,” Finn says, urgently. “Kylo Ren _ordered_ that execution. If he ever was human, if you knew him in the past, that’s _all_ gone now. Please. Let him go.”

The urgency in Finn’s voice penetrates Poe’s numb shock. It’s not a surprise - more like confirmation of a certainty, like turning his gaze at last toward an animal that’s been stalking him in the dark. He finds he’s known - or expected - this all along. The order would have come from the top, and Poe doubts it’s the first time Kylo has given it.

_And how long until it’s me giving that order? How long until I’m trying to count the value of whatever information I can still get out on my own, against the lives I’ve taken to get it?_

It’s the sort of arithmetic that never works out. Never with a positive balance, anyway. He reaches down into the part of himself that’s desperate to make all this into a win, to dig all of the victory that he can out of this shambles, and he turns it to a new purpose.

“Alright. You go get the pilot,” he says, packing the rest of his emotions aside. One task, one moment. _Right now, and nothing else._

The rest will be waiting for him, inescapable, somewhere outside of this entanglement. Poe will have to survive that long before it matters, and one or two TIES against the _Finalizer_ don’t make good odds. 

There’s no spark of recognition in Temmin Wexley’s eyes when Finn leads him out of the darkness of the detention block. Poe wonders if he’d notice, even if Poe weren’t wearing a helmet. His face is bruised and his eyes are distant, and Poe sees that the fire is cold inside. Burning in low, near-dying embers.

When they flare up, it’ll be a risk to them all - spilling over the way Poe’s seen men do when they’re injured and desperate. The First Order officer training included a lot of talk about channeling such passions. Poe puts his head down and tries not to think about all the metaphors of brightly burning stars and catalysts - they are all disguise words for death.

-

“Take that one,” Poe directs them toward a bird he knows to be reliable, his visor labeling each by serial numbers at his request.

“Why that one?” Finn asks urgently back in his ear. Snap looks vaguely more roused - a hurried conference in a supply closet has bolstered his hope. Banked up the flames. He’ll fight for himself - for whatever redemption he feels he needs after the attentions of the inquisitor droids - at least. 

Momentum.

“It’s been serviced recently,” Poe says. “It’ll have full fuel cells, a new set of attenuators in the hyperdrive.”

“Good,” Finn says, determined, reassuring himself. “Good. We have to get as far away from here as fast as-”

“We have to go back to Jakku,” Snap says.

Both Poe and Finn turn their eyes on him at the same time.

“My droid,” Snap begins.

A burst of chatter in Poe’s ear, and he makes a rushing gesture at them. “No time for that, now. I’ll be on comm channel Alpha-esk-five. We’ll have to work it out in the air. Now go - they’ll figure out to lock down the hangar bays any minute.”

Poe finds himself left with the task of stealing his own TIE fighter. He grabs all of his code cylinders and drops them down a disposal chute, picking a single-pilot fighter, devoid of the two person pilot-and-gunner system and the red stripes of specialist status. The cockpit feels even more cramped as he begins to run diagnostics, checking over the systems and saying a little prayer to the Force that everything’s in good order.

His own voice forms a mantra in his ears as he pulls of the restricting helmet for once needing the full, unhindered field of his vision.

“I can do this,” Full fuel cells. Thrust generators and ION engines normal. No pattern variation.

“I can do this,” the engines fire on, purring to life. He starts to check the stabilizers.

“Unidentified pilot, power down your engines, and-”

Chaos erupts in the hangar as the other TIE starts to take off, then hits the end of its cable tether without enough thrust to break it. Poe can hear the _twang_ and recoil sound of it, and it aches all the way down his spine, as urgency and near panic sparks up in him.

“I can do this.” He jams a hand on the comm panel, hoping they’d turned to the right frequency already.

“You have to disengage the fuel line!” Poe shouts, his eye drawn to his own readout panel by a warning yellow indicator light.

“I’m trying,” Snap’s voice sounds grim and determined over the firing canons tearing through the hangar.

“Overhead panel,” Poe instructs, feeling his guts sinking into his boots as he watches the flight stabilizer light flicker back and forth from yellow to red, warning of a dire failure. “On your left. It’s a toggle switch with a black-”

Poe hears the pop and hiss of the cable releasing, even over the sounds of panic in the hangar and the continued blaster fire tearing through the enclosed space, echoing under his own panting, panicked breath.

Then a massive explosion rocks the far end of the hangar and the traffic controllers yelling over the official channels go suddenly silent.

Poe turns off all of the diagnostic indicator lights and closes his hands on the yoke. The time is now. He lifts the fighter off its pad, and follows his friends out of the hangar and into the chaos.

“You have to target the ventral guns,” Poe instructs, as he watches heavy cannon fire fill the air around them. “We got about forty five seconds before they scramble from the far-side hangar.” 

“Cover me, I’m going to line up my gunner,” Snap’s voice reaches back over the comms, sounding strained with effort. Poe drops into loose formation behind the red-striped fighter, picking off what smaller defensive guns he can get along the _Finalizer’s_ belly. 

His fighter seems to pull wildly in either direction, sometimes resisting his commands and sometimes heeding the slightest shift of the yoke with a plunging, driving motion to one side or the other. He struggles to keep it under control, feeling the sick lurch of panic in his middle answer every wild motion.

Ahead, a bright spark of fire - an explosion. The heavy canons are gone, and Poe feels a momentary lift in his spirits as they whooping comes to him over his comms.

“Did you see that?” Finn, triumphant.

“I saw it. Good shot,” Snap, starting to sound alive again.

“We have to make the jump to lightspeed,” Finn says.

“My droid’s on the surface of the planet,” Snap answers. His TIE is already heading for Jakku again, as a wave of First Order fighters begins pouring out of the undamaged hangar bay of the _Finalizer_ , swooping toward the meagre pair on their team.

“A _droid_?” Finn demands.

“That’s right,” Snap answers, determined.

“If we go back to Jakku-”

“It’s an astromech-”

“No droid is worth-”

“This one is,” Snap answers, and Poe suddenly knows why.

A small, tight hope springs up in his chest. _The map._

“It’s got the map,” Poe says over the comm, opening fire on the pursuing TIEs and fighting to keep his misbehaving fighter between his friends and the oncoming swarm.

“It leads straight to Luke Skywalker,” Snap verifies.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Finn snarls.


	11. Chapter 11

Poe wakes up slowly. The heat is oppressive, half of his face pressed to itchy, red-hot sand and the other feeling raw and burnt at the same time. Agony radiates outward from his back, and he’s distantly aware that he’s been dreaming.

A few seconds of hazy confusion lay over him like a blanket. His eyelids feel gummy and glued shut, his hands aching, shoulders sore. His back - _his back!_

A surge of memory rushes like a tide against Poe’s thoughts.

He’d seen a laser cannon blast hit the red-striped SF-TIE with Finn and Snap in it, plunging it spinning into the atmosphere. His own ship had betrayed him as soon as he hit atmo after it. 

Screaming warning klaxons told Poe that the stabilizers had failed utterly, and the forces of gravity and inertia had hurled the TIE into a wild spin that he was powerless to stop. He’d gone end over end, pressure pinning him to his seat and the high, panicked animal whimpering of his own voice echoing in his ears.

The TIE had ejected him at under 10,000 feet and he’d felt all the old stress lines in his back crumple again - weakened by his disregard for them in all his previous flights and smashed together in a jumble like bone dice rolled in too tight a grip.

Now, he feels a low ache above his tailbone; a pulsing agony that follows the counterpoint of his heartbeat, and nothing below it.

Poe pulls in a ragged gasp through his teeth. It’s half hot sand that sticks to his dry lips and grits between his teeth when he coughs. He forces his eyes open, and then regrets it.

For a moment the white brilliance of the sand-reflected sunlight sears his retinas. His eyes - used to the dim, artificial light of the Star Destroyer and space - are unable to quickly adjust, and he’s dazzled sand blind, with a pained groan.

He closes his eyes again. How far had he landed from the TIE? How far from Finn and Snap or civilization? How long has he been lying here?

All of these questions spring up and cover over the last, most urgent and painful question.

_Can I move?_

When Poe can’t block it out anymore, feeling it throbbing through his thoughts and consuming them, overwhelming, he tries.

He breathes deep, coughs, and faces the sunlight again. Poe starts from the top. His arms - he’s got that. He gathers them to himself in the sand, finding them half entangled in parachute lines. When he can lift his head - cautious - from the sand, he sees that he’s been dragged some ways along the open space between the dunes by the open chute, his body pulled straight along a line in the sand.

There’s a gritty feeling between his uniform top and chest, and he can see that ahead of him the parachute has entangled itself against - _is that the husk of a Star Destroyer?_

Had the Resistance come? _Was that the_ Finalizer?

It takes his foggy, pain-stunned mind a few minutes to figure it out. It’s too old, to weather-worn. It’s not the configuration that the _Finalizer_ is.

_It’s an old Imperial Star Destroyer,_ he understands. _I’m on Jakku._ A noise pulls his attention to one side. His eyes pick out a dark shape against the pale sand. The remains of his ejection seat. A small figure is rooting around with the mechanism.

“Hey!” Poe manages, his voice raw and weak as the figure comes up with his emergency survival kit. All his rations and water vanish into a pack at the figure’s side. 

The figure goes still, tense. Poe wonders if he should have said anything at all - he’s suddenly, acutely aware of his own helplessness. His legs obey no command; insensate, even to his pleading, to how badly he _needs_ to get up.

For a time, the small humanoid studies him, measuring. He is dressed in a mismatched array of practical coverings. Finally, either testing the waters or satisfied that Poe isn’t going to drop dead immediately, the figure straightens from its crouch.

“I thought you were dead,” it says, in accented common. Poe’s pretty sure that he’s a Blarina behind those goggles. “That was some crazy flying.”

His hand wanders to his blaster, and Poe balances himself to show one of his own, palm-out, in surrender.

“Please, you can keep what you’ve got,” Poe says. “There was another ship - another TIE - coming for the surface.”

The Blarina hesitates, speculating. His goggled eyes sweep over Poe’s prone figure - taking in the First Order uniform, his overall condition. He makes a low, whistling sound.

“A deserter, eh? Crazier than I thought.” His stubby, clawed fingers drum against the holster of his weapon, speculating. 

Poe forges on, fighting against his sinking feeling. “Did you see where the other ship landed?”

“That ship is gone, friend,” the Blarina says, still thoughtful. His small, shrewd eyes don’t leave Poe’s form, taking in the way he’s holding himself. “It landed in the sinking fields and exploded. Shame. Good, new parts on that ship.”

Poe’s hopes sink sharply. A stab of remorse transfixes him, front to back. 

“Where’s _your_ ship, friend?” the Blarina wonders, tap-tap-tapping his claws against his blaster holster.

“Lost,” Poe says, feeling like a shell of himself; like his victory has been hollowed out. So close - and yet not enough. “Same as me.”

The scavenger’s mouth smiled viciously. “It seems to me that something lost can be scavenged. I might just scavenge you.”

-

From the lowest point in Poe’s luck, he makes only gradual progress out. Once the Blarina - Naka-Iit - discovers how damaged Poe is, he gives up his dreams of selling Poe to slavers and settles instead for ransoming Poe to himself. It takes nearly all of his ill-gotten First Order wages to buy his freedom and a ride to the nearest village with a space port. A minor miracle that the First Order has not yet frozen his funds.

Along the ride, Naka-Iit decides he likes Poe well enough not to simply drop him at the edge of town and let him crawl in. Poe’s back has acquired an alarming broken-glass grinding sort of pain that scares him. He cannot find the sort of medical treatment he needs here - but he books passage with a sympathetic spice-trader back to a core world with a Resistance presence.

“I don’t have to help you go to the toilet, do I?” the man asks, once Poe is loaded - bound practically immobile - into the cargo hold.

Poe chokes back his bitter laugh. The First Order liquid diet renders that a less repulsive necessity, and he finds the irony upsetting. Instead, he shakes his head. “Leave a bucket, I’ll make do.”

The trader does him one better. He eases Poe’s journey with the artificial, high-strung numbness of spice. His pain recedes from the soothing touch of the intoxicant, his mind wanders, lost for a time. He does not get hungry, does not fear for his future. 

He dreams a little of his father. Of Leia, at times, just looking at him. Of Finn holding his hands, bare skin to bare skin at last.

It’s the kindest gift he’s ever been given, until it begins to wear off. 

This is a haze of pain and liquid dreams in in the bacta - in his moments of consciousness, he strings together simple concepts as thoughts. Hospital-healing-surgery-bacta.

Finally, Leia.

He opens his eyes, lost in time and space, and for a moment it’s like he’s years younger again. He plucks at strings in his foggy mind and wonders - around the deja-voux - why _Leia_ has come to discharge him from the New Republic Navy.

“What-?” he manages. His throat feels dry, his voice unused and gummy.

Leia looks at him a long time, her head cocked. She’s measuring something about him, but he can’t guess what. 

“Welcome back, Poe,” she says.

Poe tries to take in his surroundings. He feels sluggish, his body reluctant to follow his commands.

Then, in a rush, he remembers. There’s one brief moment of true panic, flaring up grief and apology and self-pity. His words rush together, tangle up.

What dislodges at last is; “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

Leia looks at him for a long moment before asking, “What is it that you have to be sorry for, Dameron?”

“I failed the mission,” Poe says, wondering if she’s been waiting this whole time in the hope that he has the map, or the information on it. “I couldn’t get the map, and I couldn’t save Finn or Temmin-”

His voice wavers and fails. He can’t go on. He doesn’t - or can’t - cry, either. His throat is choked with the built up tension of it, but nothing spills over. It all crashes against some obstruction and stops, like a droid frozen in the sand.

“Poe,” Leia says, sharply. It drags his gaze to hers like a chain. “You haven’t failed.”

“I-”

Leia stops him with a sharp, no-nonsense glare that rattles Poe, silences him so he can continue. 

“We have reports that the First Order is looking for a droid matching the description of Commander Wexley’s,” she informs him. “We’ve _also_ just received a report that the same droid is in Agent Finn’s company on neutral ground.”

She waits for the words to sink in.

_Finn’s alive?_

“Our pilots are on the way to collect them,” Leia explains. “You can rest easy that anything you could have done, you did. It was your information that got us to Jakku, your reports that led to the destruction of a First Order staging platform and the recovery of the _Ysira Zyde_.”

Poe feels dazed by the news. Dizzy with it. Leia reaches out and steadies him. “As for you, I took the liberty of retrieving you from the hospital. I couldn’t trust you’d go unnoticed on Hosnia. You arrived in a First Order uniform, after all, and your crash hardly ruined your good looks. I couldn’t spare the men to keep you safe there, but I could keep you safe here, damn it.”

“Here?” Poe finally tears his eyes away from her to look around. He realizes he’s in a medical ward of some kind, curtained off from outside activity.

“You’re on D’qar,” Leia explains. “Resistance Base Alpha.”

“Ma’am,” Poe says, “what about my injuries?”

He makes an effort to sit up - and the sensation is strange. Inorganic, but he can move. Leia’s expression softens some.

“They pulled out the crumpled fusion in your lumbar spinal column and replaced it - and several affected vertebrae. Dr. Kalonia gives me very good odds that you should have already regained some function-” she looks askance at him, taking in his nod, before she continues. “It should permanently repair the paralysis. It may feel a little funny. Take some time to get used to. I can’t promise it won’t hurt at all, and you’ve got a new set of scars that would impress a veteran wookie, but it’s damn near uncrushable.”

Poe tries to absorb what this means.

“The rest of you, not so much,” Leia temporizes. “Try to remember you’re still _mostly_ human.”

“I can still fly?” Poe asks.

“Not yet,” Leia says. “Eventually, I hope, yes. I can’t afford to pasture good pilots, here. It might hurt. It might take everything you have, but you _will_ fly again, are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am,” Poe says. He’d jump out of bed into a cockpit _right now_ if she asked.

“In the meantime, when you’re ready, I have a shortage of good mechanics. Some morons think there’s no glory in it,” Leia all but growls. “I understand that you’re not only an able hand at it, but I expect you have a very specific appreciation for doing the job right.”

“Ma’am?” Poe asks.

“I want you in charge of my technical ground crew,” Leia says, short and to the point. “As soon as you’re on your feet.”

-

It means he’s on the runway three hours later supervising the triage of damaged X-Wing fighters as they return from their mission to Takodana when Finn appears in the company of the General and Han Solo himself; alive and whole and with Snap’s battered astromech at his side.

Poe is overcome with emotion, and he wilsl his unfamiliar feeling legs to carry him there. He only stumbles some, but Finn catches him in an embrace.

“You’re alive,” Poe breathes, glad. He pats Finn on the back as Finn thumps him until he sees stars though his new stitches and his teeth rattle, and squeezes him until he aches and he knows he’s alive.

“What happened?” Finn asks. “I saw your ship go down, but when I could finally get there-”

“I know,they said yours exploded,” Poe explains, desperate and glad.” I couldn’t go look for you, my legs-”

“Leia told me,” Finn says, pushing him back a step to look him up and down.

“It doesn’t matter,” Poe says. “The droid. The _map_ , you completed-”

“Commander Wexley didn’t make it,” Finn says, sobering the mood. “I tried, but the ship sank in the sand. I’m sorry.”

Poe feels the loss acutely, but even this can’t sink his mood entirely. It could have been him in that cockpit, but it wasn’t.

“Poe,” Finn says, urgently, catching his attention. “I need your help.”

“Anything,” Poe says, steadying his unstable body on Finn’s outstretched arms. The future is here, now, and while they move into it, he can evade the past.

Poe repeats, “Anything,” and means it.

-

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> _A fish in a sinkhole_   
>  _Waiting for the fleet to show_   
>  _Over flesh and fishbones_   
>  _And the imaginary sand below_


End file.
